“Blooms-bury”
From: Monster Flowers
we gather around tables –
schoolchildren with safety scissors,
faeries set to a flower feast –
and shape crepe,
pulp hearts of conifers
(reduced by a dimension,
then returned)
a simulacrum of their natural peers.
a mother,
palm to paper,
traces in outline the hands that raised
her daughter opposite
fingers, flowers, faces –
the hardest shapes to draw.
—
umbrella inverts in the wind
and the blossom curls and shies,
as if shielding her oxeye
against the mist.
—
From: Harmonic Dimensions
rain-light enters the church
through green stained glass
and we lie on our backs,
wide-mouthed fish at pond’s bottom.
I glance sideways at the sunken pietà,
fold like a child.
incense lingers on the air
and we encircle one another in ripples,
barefoot strangers joining voices
before splintering off into blue night.
said aloud,
“chant”
might be taken for
“chance” –
both reverberate
below the vault of sky.
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