Carl Sandburg

Shirt

I REMEMBER once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering
    shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and
    the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the
    stuff.
And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the
    singing voice of a careless humming woman.
One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a
    bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own
    talking to a spread of white stars:
              It was you that slunk laughing
              in the clumsy staggering shadows.
Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are
    alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway
    somewhere in the city’s push and fury
Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence
    under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run
    away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.
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