SPONTANEOUS me, Nature,

The loving day, the friend I am happy with,

The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,

The hill-side whitened with blossoms of the mountain
ash,

The same, late in autumn—the gorgeous hues of red,
yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,

The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—
the private untrimmed bank—the primitive apples
—the pebble-stones,

Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of
one after another, as I happen to call them to me,
or think of them,

The real poems, (what we call poems being merely
pictures,)

The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men
like me,

This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always
carry, and that all men carry,

(Know, once for all, avowed on purpose, wherever are
men like me, are our lusty, lurking, masculine,
poems,)

Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-
climbers, and the climbing sap,

Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb
of love—breasts of love—bellies pressed and
glued together with love,

Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after
love,

The body of my love—the body of the woman I
love—the body of the man—the body of the
earth,

Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,

The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and
down—that gripes the full-grown lady-flower,
curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes
his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and
tight upon her till he is satisfied,

The wet of woods through the early hours,

Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep,
one with an arm slanting down across and below
the waist of the other,

The smell of apples, aromas from crushed sage-plant,
mint, birch-bark,

The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he con-
fides to me what he was dreaming,

The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still
and content to the ground,

The no-formed stings that sights, people, objects, sting
me with,

The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much as it
ever can any one,

The sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers, that only
privileged feelers may be intimate where they
are,

The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the
body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where
the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,

The limpid liquid within the young man,

The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,

The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at
rest,

The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in
others,

The young woman that flushes and flushes, and the
young man that flushes and flushes,

The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot
hand seeking to repress what would master him
—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,

The pulse pounding through palms and trembling
encircling fingers—the young man all colored,
red, ashamed, angry;

The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing
and naked,

The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the
grass in the sun, the mother never turning her
vigilant eyes from them,

The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening
or ripened long-round walnuts,

The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,

The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find
myself indecent, while birds and animals never
once skulk or find themselves indecent,

The great chastity of paternity, to match the great
chastity of maternity,

The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic
and fresh daughters,

The greed that eats me day and night with hungry
gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to
fill my place when I am through,

The wholesome relief, repose, content,

And this bunch plucked at random from myself,

It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall
where it may.