She said to me: “Come now, you owe me one,”
And bid me not to worry. She would show
Me how to do these things I’d never done;
Just how to pay the debt I’d come to owe —

And slowly, like a child that learns to crawl,
I inched along the traces of her ground:
She gave off teaching and surrendered all,
Her measured breathing changed to quick’ning sound

To give herself completely to my trust,
And only on her pleasure then to dwell;
To move in slightest ways so to adjust,
To find her shining as last moments fell —

The lesson learned to be used, then, in living:
Receiving finds its fullest mark, in giving