Immortelles

Immortelles

Strawflower memories long picked,

so delicate now, desiccated, thin,

pale lime rose as sunset gathers thick--

I hold them pressed within my shadow book

petal by paper petal flat and dry,

pastel on the final page as a fading sigh.

An eyebrow here above an eye of gold,

there a curving wave of steelhard hip

fiddlehead stringing a twine of vining leg

light as terry toweling loosely rolled,

white where you put it once in trust to sleep

across my waist when time was sounding deep.

I examine every rescued immortelle

with eyes for fingers before it slips to dust,

float it from the place it marks like stone;

put away the ochre stain, the dark blood's rust,

the thorns, the weeds, the rocksalt wellspring floods--

I turn the pages past to reach sealed buds,

choose their morning cinnamon skin anew,

smell the amber warmth spill periwinkle blue

from where I sit being plundered by the roots.

Under the sunblind everlasting sky, ruffled faces

open upward, delicate, alive: my song decked

strawflower memories, long picked.

~April 2012, revised January 2013

posted for   real toads

 Fireblossom Friday
Challenge:Doubletalk

The ever-amazing Fireblossom is like Ike and Tina, she never does nothin' 'nice and easy.' This time, she wants us to begin and end a poem with the same line, yet make the meaning totally different in each case. Yeesh. I've been up all night trying to get this one right.  

Process note: immortelle — n    everlasting , Also called: everlasting flower:  any of various plants, mostly of the family Asteraceae  (composites), that retain their colour when dried, esp Xeranthemum annuum

~World English Dictionary

Header Image: Immortelles, by Stefan Lucian

Public domain, via wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: Dried Flower Bouquet, by moonlightbulb, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Only License