by Jackie K. White

 

 

Let the flowers make their journey

to a bit of field on my table,

close to the worms. Listen, world,

the white fingers, the penny heart

have nothing more to say to me.

Take your emblems and leave.

She was flawed. So what?

I failed. Get therapy-taught to say

the undone is out of range,

burble it up and send it river down.

None of this has anything to sing.

The journey of every flower

is the same: pucker, petal, and

pout; shed and mimic drought.

And the journey of the field?

fertilized with detritus or dead

fruition, it’s thrashed and bound

into sheaves mounded like graves.

And the furrows? a striation

that falsely seems to wave,

flowing toward that same black

horizon. So, when you’re cleaned

but not ironed, when you’re dried,

but not powdered, there is no

soothing. Our bodies are trash.

We leave them on the shore

and only a silent God knows if

the soul flies loose or is moored.