<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p>Button</p><p>It likes both to enter and to leave,<br>actions it seems to feel as a kind of hide-and-seek.<br>It knows nothing of what the cloth believes<br>of its magus-like powers.</p><p>If fastening and unfastening are its nature,<br>it doesn't care about its nature.</p><p>It likes the caress of two fingers<br>against its slightly thickened edges.<br>It likes the scent and heat of the proximate body.<br>The exhilaration of the washing is its wild pleasure.</p><p>Amoralist, sensualist, dependent of cotton thread,<br>its sleep is curled like a cat to a patch of sun,<br>calico and round.</p><p>Its understanding is the understanding <br>of honey and jasmine, of letting what happens come.</p><p>A button envies no neighbouring button,<br>no snap, knot, no polyester-braided toggle.<br>It rests on its red-checked shirt in serene disregard.</p><p>It is its own story, completed.</p><p>Brevity and longevity mean nothing to a button carved of horn.</p><p>Nor do old dreams of passion disturb it,<br>though once it wandered the ten thousand grasses<br>with the musk-fragrance caught in its nostrils;<br>though once it followed - it did, I tell you - that wind for miles.</p><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Jane Hirshfield</div></body></html>