This is What I Got for Valentine's Day (Beat That!)

A Flower Wild Growing

Look with your mind upon a flower,

A rose wild growing in June;

Not the red velvet,

Nor the snowy white,

But the seldom variety that sometimes is seen

But is known very well at only a glance,

Like the smell of a favorite dish that floods you with nostalgia,

Or the sound of the Claire de lune.

Look with your mind on this image,

Envision one ray direct from the sun,

Piercing the overcast heavens,

Touching the earth at the foot of the stem

Where the dirt lies quietly hugging.

The time is dawn and dew is hanging,

Like drops of thoughts that will soon be forgotten;

Thoughts about the dream–

The dream now departed–

Wherein visions of nothing meant everything at once,

And sense was unimportant.

Those drops low hanging,

Which, in the ray now beaming,

Glisten, or bend light to fan out in your direction,

They sag by the pull in the core of the world,

To drop, or be drunk by creation,

But on this morn they’ll defy the prescribed

And vanish in the warmth of the light.

The clouds open.

You move to the flower and crouch to be near it.

You observe what few have thought to observe,–

Or thought to consider at all–

You lie on your back and it stands beside you.

What marvel of color in contrast with color:

Rich green on the parts that look down on the soil,–

This against the blue of the sky–

The soft spreading petals bending up like a cup

As if to draw in descending love,

These are white where they meet the receptacle

But patiently pinken on their way to sun;

Leaves in vibrant green,

As you look down, amplify the browns in the soil;

The bee, the ladybug, the caterpillar passerby,

Add to the mixture their yellow, red, black, and blue.

Who, who, could know your wonder,

An awe like one never known?

And what, what, what could express

This reverence that moves you to stillness?

I am accustomed to the wonderment.

Its company is familiar.

I feel on occasions when I luck to be by you

The breath of this moment,

The stillness.

You are my nostalgia;

My voluntary dream.

You reflect light on lightless days, and it envelops you.

I thought to look and you colored my life

With contrasts that took, nay take my breath away

And offer it up in communion.

---

For Kristin

From David

Valentine’s Day, 2012

I love you