Seeds and insects merge in a blur of poplar cotton
That charges through the air, and speaks
In the voice of birds, words we scarcely know
Except as patterns – as the poppies reduce
The grandeurs of sun to fit our eyes – but it is
Only a whisper – a dance of grass – we can’t,
No matter how close we go, hear – the poppies
Cupped to the sky for those few fragile weeks
When it is safe to be free, when they can finally be
Who they are, as if no one is watching – the feeling
Hits us somehow, as if to know, without knowing,
Is all we can bear, to endure the shadow so
We might see again who we are, at a distance –
The sound of the stream without its meaning –
As if we could create from nothing but a feeling –
And imagine the blood purple grass tips extend
Far from the green flames of their swollen blades
To infinity – all that comes in – as the salts come
From snow melt to feed the ocean – what will be forever
Insufficient, as if that is the point, to long for what is not,
Far from the green flames of their swollen blades
To infinity – all that comes in – as the salts come
From snow melt to feed the ocean – what will be forever
Insufficient, as if that is the point, to long for what is not,
Knowing it will never come, knowing it was once as clear
As the sun-filled poppies – and still is, to another eye,
The one that looks upon me now, and sees how hard I try
To identify what is from what is not – how the crows
guard
The surrendered valley to allow its many dimensions
Of green to fill its feeling limbs; why the painted lady
Flaps her wings on a rock like a book to send a message
To the sun; what are the names, taxonomies of these
Sparks that whirr (and offer more ineffectual guesses
On causes and effects) – still the trail leads with invisible
Crumbs, to further higher and more remote locations,
Where what has been created can withstand what’s
Been destroyed – as a mount of granite says
To the surly ocean, “bring it on.”
