Adelaide Crapsey

Among the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July, I read your heart in a book. And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered. And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt. And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea: Mother of God, I’m so little a thing, Let me sing longer, Only a little longer. And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.