Poppies in the rocks have volunteered, yellow yawns exhausted by the talk of hedges, walls common as seed stuck to fur or floated on a breeze. Underground stems sneak past the whips of wire. Last year’s exhaled sigh is this year’s cause, four feet farther from the barricade. About This Poem I’ve been reading…
Sit in the sun surrounded by love,
head heavy as a peony,
The boot we find in the river, empty
as a homestead – dishes on the table, owners gone –
Murmuring voices whisper my fears
at the lip of the cave.
Elegantly seeded in the furrow of her spine,
even rows of letters
repeat:
Under the pitted crust of April snow, blind and
rooting, everything waits.
I know you keep antiques, beauty,
venerable objects you love
Kiln-fired hopes still shatter
easily enough. She lives in the city,
cultivating orchards in her mind,
The angel was kind, a school nurse
applying the live coal like a bandage.
It needn’t be much.