Blood Lily Stands Tall and Stout In Back Porch’s Wind
No more drooping leaves.
Her eight inch coral globe is tipped
in tiny yellow dots,
her skirt tipped in blood.
No more drooping leaves.
Her eight inch coral globe is tipped
in tiny yellow dots,
her skirt tipped in blood.
For most
Of the summer
I’ve been waking up
Early dawn light
And dirty clothes
Tending a lawn
That has grown wild
Over several years
But today I woke
Watching leaf and sky
Out my window
And I was tired
So I rolled over
And when the light was warmer
And stronger
I came down alone
And drank coffee
And wrote poetry.
Brothers, last evening I dreamt
I was giving our long-departed grandparents
a ride in a golf cart, in Tucson, after sundown,
with the purpose of going across town
to pick up their daughter, our dear mother,
our progress impeded by a bustling street festival,
full of sun-kissed people and marmalade colors,
music — so much cheerful music — smoke
and the smell of meat cooking on outdoor grills,
stoic mariachis and drunken revelers,
street dogs fighting over scraps in alleyways,
the feeling overall, from the stops and starts
and twisting though the crowd,
of being on a carnival amusement.
I awoke to a bird singing
among the thorns of the holly tree.
I’m afraid that this means
she is not long for this world.
i met you in my old room this morning
purple costumes on the floor those childhood
gowns you wore in the forest gathering
ferns to sell to visitors
as if you could buy all that away
maybe it was playing at capital maybe
it was wanting to receive those round
acorn tops in exchange to whistle with
position between your two thumbs carefully
blowing a shrill cry
that traverses the rotting log, your storefront counter
and into that house
down the hall where there are portraits
hanging
