Penultimate

Quatrain

The best part of my bed is you,

That when I turn I find you in it.

Class starts in half an hour, it's true,

But let me linger here for just a minute.

* * *

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Beneath the sound

Of the neighbors' television

And behind the whirr of traffic,

You can, if still and humble enough,

Hear a toddler giggling across the street,

Electricity running through a wall socket,

Platelets bumping the walls of your veins.

But above this, hanging

Over all these sounds is a heavy black canvas,

Tied to the Earth at the corners.

If you wait long enough,

Silence has not only a sound,

But a color, a weight,

It presses on you like dough and fills the corners of your eyes,

Blows on your cheek

And cries in your lap.

* * *

Quick Quatrain

I lay me down to take a nap today

And dreamt that I was sleeping next to you.

But jsut my pillow there beside me lay.

Until tomorrow, that will have to do.

* * *

At the Tone

"You can know that you're going to heaven!"

The bumper sticker said, and offered a phone number:

1-507-248-1228.

Whether I intended to use it or not,

I figured it would be nice information to have,

So I called. Answering machine. Typical.

* * *

Bouqet

You were every flower, Gramma.

Every summer, the sunflowers would volunteer in your yard.

You would hold the big, dried heads like a club

And bash them against the ground until the seeds fell out for the birds.

The oil from so many shells killed the grass, but you didn't care.

The flowers were like you: strangers from Kansas

who had to find some way of being useful.

You were always making paintings of Bouganvillea,

Little flecks of hot pink stinging the canvas, the same color as your lipstick.

You never seemed satisfied with them. We all inherited a version of that scene

The Spanish mission with bright, resching vines

Among your personal effects was another, unfinished version,

With the same bright petals tapped into soft vellum.

I bought a Ligularia for you on clearance once.

"The Rocket," was the variety. I had no idea how to grow it,

But you couldn't plant your own flowers anymore

So I planted it by the front door on a guess.

It prospered in neglect, even as you faded,

And it still shoots jagged orange flowers past the shaded step.

A new stalk each year.

Once you told me a story,

How when you were a little girl you took a Peony and dissected the heavy bloom,

Counting the petals. Over 200.

You brought one of those bushes to Colorado with you.

"Sarah Bernhardt". White with Red flecks. It never did well.

When we took you back to Topeka, I put one on your grave.

* * *

this may not be my best poem, but it is my favorite. You should have seen me sobbing as I typed this, even years after I wrote it.