Poetry
Coming Quiet
It's almost September again.
I sit stiffening in the wide
wicker chair, watching
my line break while late summer folds
the garden like a spent libretto, edges
shredded to a slatternly fringe.
I'm trying to like it this way —
the randy letting go, the smell
of the sour ferment — that brackish
interleaving of gravity's dark romance.
But I miss things.
My radiant line of white
hydrangeas — it's hard
to watch them bow so low,
bear the rusting of their crowns.
I want everything
back. The vanished scent of the lilacs,
drenching me again in my mother's
goodnight kiss. I lie down beside
them, their dry bones trembling
with the industry of insects.
Enter the grand orange monarchs.
I never see them coming,
quiet as candles
through the dark curtain of arborvitae.
Confident and ruthless. Vampiric
in their beauty—can they shapeshift
on the milkweed's poison leaves,
suck the electric blue throats
of the salvia and disappear?
Burning little books for wings beating hell for leather
so even the shy day moon holds on
to her light.