from Wind on the Heath: New and Selected Poems, by Naomi Beth Wakan

Ambition

To reach an age when things
fall away unneeded,
as spent petals on a flower,
as Fall leaves from the tree,
as skins of summer snakes.
When Socrates passed the market stalls
he noted, “What a lot
of things I don’t need.”
Ah! that’s what I mean.

—Naomi Beth Wakan, Wind on the Heath: New and Selected Poems