Thinking of Love
after Jane Kenyon’s Thinking of Flowers

Oh love,
promise to bring me flowers—daffodils
or the whitest daisies
in February
and I will leave them—

leave my husband
and my children,
leave my books
and my Buddhas,
leave my photos,
the evidence of a life
livable without
the one who captures
these truths on film.

They would all disappear,
with my fingers cradling stems
and yellow petals
instead of waiting,
waiting, waiting,
to capture beauty
or happiness—
a bird that flies less
and less frequently
to my hand
to feed.

Every fall
I get down on my knees
in the light of a full moon
to dig the soft heart of earth
near my kitchen door
open one more time
before snow—
to place the crisp bulbs of spring
into a bed, a sleeping death.
This little grave,
these bodies lined up secrets,
helping me make it through the winters,
just like my mother and her sisters
and all the grandmothers before them.
What else sustained them
in the white and wind
prisons of the North,
their male captors hovering
and their coughing, crying children,
wailing like sad sirens
warning them
that their short lives
would soon be cut
like these blossoms
or spring
or the humid breath
of summer.

No love,
don’t make me wait
until May
for the escape into color.
Deliver me now
and it will be you
who will be rewarded
beyond your Earthly imagination.

This desire no longer
contained.