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in cotton that expands vaguely
and goes aloft on breezes
looking supremely idle,
to drift up against fenceposts
and weeds and along the sides
of farm buildings and upon
the crops, irrelevantly.
The tree having grown from one
white dot, you know that of course
on the microscopic scale
in the seed's interior
it worked as distinctively
as it does here, fully grown --
below those microscopic
particulars, well below
the molecular, there lay
at last vagueness, though; vagueness
is ultimate. Thence it came,
thither doubtless it will go;
but here it stands out clearly
against a sky, it traffi
cs
with the world intricately
and persistently, fastened
by many ways into things;
moving to the world's movements
its cotton drifting thickly
through the air on certain days
in midsummer is a sight
ordinary and solemn.
I spend half an afternoon
underneath this glistener:
in a light breeze the leaves make
a fi ne pattering sound, like