The Clique

A clique of lives surrounds a sunny maypole

which fosters glowing-warm integrity

so that every one of them is awed and able

to appreaciate their own identity.

I linger but a step from thermal rapture,

frozen in a cave of hibernation.

I try with all the arts to join their culture,

but my selfdom hides in icy rumination.

Yet suppose in years to come I leave the cave

and see that while I slept the maypole froze--

integrity was drowned beneath its wave,

and on its grave self worshipping arose.

To save the maypole from the frosty ground

I’d join the clique of lives and live half-found.