Young Writers Society

26

Garden of Delights

We’ve befriended beetles in the lush landscape
of the drainage ditch, foliage overhead spreading,
shrubs’ rubbery fronds, long-reaching leaves,
sure shelter from thunder. I’ll hide under
the gentle perennial’s petals, red and wrapped
around a powdery pistil. You soak in the cool
waste water that feeds the flowers. Roots
soothe the old soil. My mouth makes the shape
of April. Your corridors are bursting with blooms
and your shadowed rooms have doors
to every echo of springtime. Spiraling
maple seeds reach with willowy hands
to hang your golden organs on the boughs.
I sleep between insects and insist
they shed their resting legs, build a nest
where I can lay a perfect egg the color
of lead. I break the bountiful and you
are strewn across the moss. I bite
your bones and my teeth weep.
We, neither of us, found rest. I rip
the riches from the forest and you
are laid to waste, wreck. and ruin.
This growing garden harms you
so I burn everything beautiful.
Better bleak and blackened,
charred and scarred, than lose you
to some somnolent grove. Give
it the match: it’ll be gone in a flash.

27

On the Trail at Night

Spreading Phlox covers the rocks, its buds all closed
and flickering in the wind like the dim white flames
of ten thousand candles. Happy birthday to this cliff-side.
Overhead, vespers bats hunt. They eat up the evening.

A white tailed jackrabbit emerges from her rest in the brush,
her wide, wild eyes shining with the glint of moon. Her ears,
black-tipped like an ink brush, swivel to catch the sound
of wide, stealthy paws. A bobcat. She darts into the dark.

In a nearby river, bream and perch do not see the water,
nor do they notice the relative darkness. The moon
is enough to catch smaller fish. Somewhere a frog
sings, but only once. April’s chill is still too sharp.

All this, and I have no place in these grasses.
All this, and there is no place to lay my head.

28

Scene from a suburban childhood

Dandelions form sunspot archipelagos in the green sea
as their seeds float like clouds over the waves of grass.
Ants form shoals and, in the black loam beneath,
worms and no-eyed creatures of the deep
go about their dark business. Lady bugs
and bumblebees flit from island to
island. A squirrel breaches. I lie
in the middle of the lawn
and try not to drown.

29

In Memory

Losing you suddenly means
this April will never be finished.

Too many things left unfinished.
I wish that