Milkweed

Milkweed

Late at night awake, sometimes

I wish that with me here I still had you

to stare at the invisiblest rhymes.

I know my dear that if I told you

my mailbox was on some fine days

a folded gnome bent over, painted blue,

or that I saw a fuchsia bird ablaze

hanging beakside down you'd know it wasn't

from the wooden feeder’s trays,

or that music just mustn’t

want to play inside the half

where the bottle wasn’t,

I know you’d let me laugh

I know you’d understand

all these things, this riff and raff.

I know you’d tell me, ever bland

your soup was cubed and smile around

the thorny rose in your mouth’s hand.

You’d draw fishes flaunting pistols, dancing drowned

in salty spotlights, playing out piscine charades

you’d let me cry and let me laugh till I hit ground.

But you’re gone, my dear, in spades

all of you each particle and seed

your face, your cashmere voice, angora braids

your hands and heart and all controls

chestnut hair and snowy bones, afloat like milkweed,

blown in the great diaspora of souls.

Leaving me to let this screed

fly into the gnome’s mouth, freed.

December 2010

For Marsha Rae

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

This poem is written roughly in the terza rima form.

Photo of milkweed by Lisa Spangler  

under Creative Commons License 3.0 U.S.