My Place

For One Who Will Stand in the Wind

Halt here a minute,
Winds, waters, scurrilous dust
Spitting my senses at me,
Contemptuous.

Stop long enough,
Make way enough.
Little the land and air I occupy.
Rivers run past such as I
Ungossiping to the sea
With no treasured drift of me.

Slight my space,
Short my minute,
Commensurate with what I am.
Yet scorn me disproportionately,
Not at all, comrades,
Since out of nearly nothing
I cry a brief equality
Who am small and great as this
Irrelevant antithesis.