The Affluent Lover

We gather plenty that we never look for.
We stumble over rosebushes, and when we reach
To keep ourselves from falling, we find peach
Blossoms in our fists. The world insists on more.

The rich man, for example. Can he endow
Enough foundations to finance his death?
Or drown his bonds in libraries when every breath
Sucks money in? He’s checked down every row.

Or talented naturalists. In any lot.
Wherever dust prevailed, Burbank could drop
A seed and it would germinate, or lop
And graft a twig and get an apricot.

It’s so, thank God, with love. I find myself,
Since you, a Carnegie twice over,
Green-thumbed and green-backed, rolling in clover,
The astonished victim of flowers and wealth.