Handfuls

Blossoms of babies
Blinking their stories
Come soft
On the dusk and the babble;
Little red gamblers,
Handfuls that slept in the dust.

Summers of rain,
Winters of drift,
Tell of the years;
And they go back

Who came soft-
Back to the sod,
To silence and dust;
Gray gamblers,
     Handfuls again.

-Carl Sandburg