The Art of Listening - by
Hunt out wild flowers,
reach out, not to pick them
but as an offer of intimacy.
Hunt out wild flowers,
reach out, not to pick them
but as an offer of intimacy.
When I used to shake a branch to douse your pram with blossom, was it a kind of caim, a ring of blessednessI tried to wrap you in? You chuckledtill your white curls shivered. Or when I lifted you right up close to the fragrant rose, was it to inoculate against all that iscrass and coarse? You pulledand crushed […]
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
You clamour at my retina, a cascade / of cartwheels, demanding paint / from my palette
Just when the hash smokers are going out to shoplift Scotch eggs …
I wanted to write an elegy
/ without flowers. I know they’re a requirement…
ice-burned tongues / clump into celestine’s / eye-blue spar
Now, perched on this polar height
When all sap lies quiet and does not climb,
When all seems dead, I cultivate
The wild garden rioting in my memory
There’s this life and no hereafter –
/ I’m sure of that
/ but still…
Each life echoing, acting out these myths: / going into darkness, re-emerging, wounds / and griefs healed over.
/ …
The orchids my mother gave me when we first met
/ are still alive, twelve days later. Although
/
/ some of the buds remain…
If I might see another Spring,
/ I’d not plant summer flowers and wait:
/ I’d have my…
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