Cornhuskers/Adelaide Crapsey

by Carl Sandburg

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.