Bouquet #1
Violets bloomed from sidewalk cracks on my walk west this morning and I thought of you, how if you were here too I’d pick one slim stalk, touch it to your face, then mine. The blooms bow to the passing of each hour, held aloft briefly by their beauty, an offering - spring’s reward after hard frost, earth’s softer lines returning in greens and blues, bright wings that winter kept still and secret, each one a tiny flight suppressed by storms and black nights, until some wheel began to turn, sun burning overhead again, taking back. There is joy in all of this, and pure need - spring’s a love note, a glance we gladly read.
What I Have Tried to Say to You
The streets are foreign now, the sidewalks wet with autumn rain, the lake with its thousand thousand green eyes holding onto the edge of summer. Nothing has been as it was. That Sunday night, I went outside to look for my hands in the mist. I could drop a rock and almost hear it sinking. In the garden, I saw a cloudburst had beaten down the stalks, savaged the fruits. There was the threat of a thunderstorm. I faced west, taking it all very seriously. In someone’s tiny book, this all made sense. It meant people should live miles or years apart, that distance is best measured by silence or the swiftness of rivers or how far one can pitch a stick across a canyon. You walk through one door and then another. I can see your back, the way you hold your head. I see you and cannot imagine ever seeing the last of you. It is the farthest shore, the one that no map ever shows. Still, there is a way to know what’s coming, to understand why some people collect stones or write in block print or suddenly become happy after a long time of barely getting by.
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