In a dream, I ask advice on raising children and am told to bury them in the yard so they’ll ripen.

But is that what’s expected? They go
away, they disappear, of their own

volition or lured by that same
promise of transformation: a handful
of seeds, slick red, small as pills

and swallowed quick when no one’s looking.
The shape of a mouth whistling, the sounds
that green makes in the trees prior to

departing. A dipper on the bucket’s lip, the rust-
speckled bloom on water. Thereafter it’s winter—
the ground frozen hard, so if you were late

to dig up the bulbs for wrapping in newspaper
in the cellar, who knows if they will still be
tender in spring? And what if I were instead

to be the one who goes away into the garden.
What if the pearled buttons were to be unfastened
and laid out one by one, like asterisks on the sill.

 

In response to Dave Bonta, Woodrat Photoblog, In a dream....

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