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When I first read this poem I felt quiet and still, as if I were with a baby in a garden and we were gently touching each flower and vegetable in turn and saying their names. When I read it again I thought of love, old love, and wondered if it too is fragile, the way new love can be fragile.

Then I wondered if all love is fragile, and if all love needs to be tended, and learned how to be held, over and over, so that it can grow old.

Little Things, by Marion Strobel

Little things I’ll give to you–
till your fingers learn to press
gently
on a loveliness;
little things and new–till your fingers learn to hold
love that’s fragile,
love that’s old.

A fiction writer, critic, and poet, Marion Strobel was an associate editor of Poetry from 1920 to 1925. Today’s poem, Little Things, is in the public domain.

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