Something surfacing-

It is hidden in the magnolias,
which are blooming now as if they have no knowledge.
As if, with texts and words
we should know the way that men think,
anticipate the shiftings of a mood and welcome it,
find the lexicon of pain, and the reference of its healing.
They, at this fragmentary time,
hold the sibilant shape of alphic love,
and dip the branches with the weight of this responsibility,
the honor of their call.

As if passing beneath them, they
laugh their emblamage upon me,
winnowing the light with careless ease upon my shoulders.
I watch a woman walking ahead,
see the colors of her eyes, the swell of skin beneath
a creamy sweater, the aurelole of her nipples
flushed.
I see this as if my hands are the wind.
I see this as if I know her and her ways.
I see this.

it all goes back to the magnolias.
you see, the way they spread and die
their color seeping from their edges like cut wrists,
and their shedding of petals a tease that ends in
death and fertilization.

And it doesn't matter, which way they wilt,
how they blow, all those
words;
they have the option to return in a year.
A woman throws back her long hair,
and stops. She looks down,
balancing on the concrete for a minute.
As if she felt the slow drift of a petal,
heard it brushing the path,
and knew that it was not a fall,
but something breaking into its own element.

This made me falter,
stop, breathe, and turn.
I shy from what will be here, under me, so soon.


GLS
4.27.91