The spirit moves,
Yet stays:
Stirs as a blossom stirs,
Still wet from its bud-sheath,
Slowly unfolding,
Turning in the light with its tendrils;
Plays as a minnow plays,
Tethered to a limp weed, swinging,
Tail around, nosing in and out of the current,
It shadows loose, a watery finger;
Moves, like a snail,
Still inward,
Taking and embracing its surroundings,
Never wishing itself away,
Unafraid of what it is,
A music in a hood,
A small thing,
Singing.

I Knew a Woman
(From Words for the Wind, 1958)

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we did make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

The Right Thing
(From The Far Field, 1964)

Let others prove the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will--
The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!--Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.

I Waited
(From The Far Field, 1964)

I waited for the wind to move the dust;
But no wind came.
I seemed to eat the air;
The meadow insects made a level noise.
I rose, a heavy bulk, above the field.

It was as if I tried to walk in hay,
Deep in the mow, and each step deeper down,
Or floated on the surface of a pond,
The slow long ripples winking in my eyes.
I saw all things through water, magnified,
And shimmering. The sun burned through a haze,
And I became all that I looked upon.
I dazzled in the dazzle of a stone.

And then a jackass brayed. A lizard leaped my foot.
Slowly I came back to the dusty road;
And when I walked, my feet seemed deep in sand.
I moved like some heat-weary animal.
I went, not looking back. I was afraid.

The way grew steeper between stony walls,
Then lost itself down through a rocky gorge.
A donkey path led to a small plateau.
Below, the bright sea was, the level waves,
And all the winds came toward me. I was glad.