So Delia Walks the Air

Shadows, it seems,

Are of Delia, each way she goes.

And various reflections, misty and faint,

Are with her regular, gay feet.

She is sister of the paleness of the rose

In late September;

And is all with the still, dull green

Of Northern grass, when November’s wind

Goes where this grass is, long and moving.

She is with all unremembered, not known dreams,

And with 7 o’clock, when the beetle

All active is, in some cunning dark.

She is with what’s hidden in the saint,

Kept back in the outrageous torrent.

Should one, some unthought of hour, meet

But distantly felt, slow walking being,

Her it will be a little one is seeing.

One has Delia seen

In the thistle’s lightest stir, lightest belonging,

In the thinnest ripple lonely pond has in an 8 o’clock orange offering of sky.

She is with the soft, hardly noticed puff

Of air, in summer stillness some hours after morning.

She it is who is between one when one hasn’t sinned

And when one has. She is with the furthest colored rays of the sun when setting

And the last horizon’s point.

She has taken for herself substance at its finest,

Least tinkling. So Delia walks the air.