There is a resignation in the cone of a white pine,
dropped by its mother onto a clump of dried mown grass,
which I arrange among my collection of spent things,
white sap coating my fingers in resinous gratitude.
Help me lift my head up
that I might see the full arc of the sun
one last time before I fall
We will stay here
Until every last petal
Has dropped from our stems
In honor of flowers plucked from life too soon
Their pristine white and luminous yellow and red and purple and orange
Etched into the memory of a fading blue sky
Of day turned to permanent night
Never a Fall or Winter or Spring
To come again
But in the Summer their seeds will have taken root
And birds and butterflies and bumblebees
Will remember each life come to violent end
As humans will not
As humans cannot
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
I promised to return
to the shaggy mantle of grass
that binds you
surrounded by golf courses, which should amuse you
supine, facing westward hoping to catch the sunset,
at least it seems that way to me.
I imagined papering my body with the translucent skins of onions,
the unsweet scent shielding me from predators,
a perfume of protection to wear under my homemade clothes.
Under a mound of dirt you lay
I imagine a saxophone
Playing ‘Round Midnight
Maple trees line the road
Their shade saved for the living
While you lay beneath the blazing sun
When I was in high school I knew nothing of poetry, except a schoolgirl’s frustration at not being able to answer…
