March 7, 2017

unseasonable
for my father

On a windowsill in rain-soaked France, a bright clutch of petals,
stalwart and stubborn against the glass. The dare they make of my own heart: "Believe."
A neighbor vase could easily have wagged its metaphors, to remind of what's
gone missing. The sting of absence. A life gone phantom. But this is the older instinct,
the call pulse-bearing, and the echo ripe and full of promises that can't - and won't -
be broken, even when they are. I wonder, dimly, how long the blooms will last,
but that is never the point. They have returned in such glorious rebellion, my gaze
turns from its own emptiness, as I hope it always remembers to, even
as the inevitable shedding comes and the final, denuded stalk remains,
carrying the memory of each unseasonable blossom in its bones.