The stem lay limp and heavy in her hand
And cold, and the leaves felt lifeless. And that night
She put it by her bed. She could not sleep,
Feeling the dead thing by her bed, feeling
The slow fingers feeling, feeling the earth
Divided by the fingers of the grass,
Of trees, of flowers, by the pressing fingers
Of grass pierced, feeling the earth pierced
And the limp stalk flowering—she could not sleep—
One night it rained with a south wind and a warm
Smell of thawed earth and rotting straw and ditches
Sodden with snow and running full. She lay
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