Love in the Time of Dame’s Rocket
I think I’m in love.
But I don’t know if with flowers or time,
Sex or death. In lust
Here where sunlight catches green
And locks up my head and hands—
Always I’m a bad bad puritan—
Imprismed in this phlox. The lung-
Ful of half-shaded air
I breathe wrapped within this light
Blouse: A loose bee compartment. Yet a fit
Snug as coffin text when I clip and hold them
Fingerbones to rib, as if I’d embarked
On a year-long trek
To rejoin this instance of sun, thick air,
Color. It keeps me coming
And going like a day, leaving
The hilltop garden burning Up
And down the twenty-three steps,
Where I can long to see the rockets lit again
Over my left shoulder
While looking back. Here, it bends me
Where I stand, has me stock-still
On my return, taking our selfies.
I don’t care if nosegay, cheap as weeds,
I’ll always cut and splay us here,
Where we begin our count to identify, eye
To cluster, the shape
Into which my I uproots
And dissolves into a garden lifting toward the sky.
When purple burns and fades
To blue-orange, the carbon love remains
Above, agape, in shades of gold and brown,
Expecting nothing, receiving all we have.
