Sara Teasdale: "May Day"

  

A delicate fabric of bird song

   Floats in the air,

The smell of wet wild earth

   Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple

   Are clenched like a hand,

Like girls at their first communion
   The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by

   Without loving it much,

The raindrop try with my lips,

   The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure

   I shall see again

The world on the first of May

   Shining after the rain?

"May Day" by Sara Teasdale. Text as published in The Collected Poems (Digireads, 2012).

Art credit: "Ladybug after the Rain," photograph by jens kolk.