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
