Puzzle In The Language of Flowers

Puzzle in the Language of Flowers

(translation below)

I dump the puzzle box

out on the ground

each piece becomes

a flower in yesterday’s bouquet

a bone of tomorrow’s skeleton.

I pick up concave paper polygons

knobbed cardboard segments

that seem to represent part of an eyebrow, or the side

of a building, but are really a sprig of acacia

lacy as midnight's clouds, thorny as memory’s stems

and here, a misshapen lump of astringent

yellow sun, the witch hazel that began it all.

That obstinate wedge of azure sky fitting nowhere

has to be the withered trumpet of a

morning glory, heavenly blue still.

Ah, an end piece.

The frame that hangs the whole

surprises the hand by jumping up

a striped carnation pinwheeled 

with a monotonous grief

 

that makes me recoil

throwing it

far across the muddy ground,

lost on the moss where it

comes to rest just bones, 

tiny, articulated phalanges,

the frontal and parietal

temporal, occipital, mandible

white as frost; out of the cardboard jaw

perhaps you can see a few daisies growing

among the marigolds, rosemary and rue

there for a century’s moment till

the next wildfire passes through.

October 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub
Join us for an evening of shared poetic goodness at the pub, open from 3:00 PM EST Tuesday till midnight EST tomorrow.

Process Notes:

acacia = secret love                 witch hazel=magic spell 
morning glory=love in vain        striped carnation=refusal
marigold=pain and grief            daisy=innocence, simplicity, cheer, true love 
rosemary=remembrance            rue=regret