15) Coda A quiet scroll of memories: my mother standing in the garden, roses in pots; stubby, uneven grass we willed into luxuriant green. The call of owls at night, always interrogating a world of mystery requiring salt, inscriptions on the ground, offerings. Our pockets full enough, we felt blessed: watched over by unseen presences. I still desire so much of what touched my tongue all those decades ago. We turned dandelion suns into heads of tufted wishes before they blew away. Mother, too, desired the dream of other selves; how high she tried to lift her voice. Lights laid a rosary trail from across the sea. In the dark, lights outlined our windows. They wound around everything, ravishing strings to phoenix any bird from fire. To write of pearled flesh, pearled bodies and what softens, once taken on the tongue— Raise a toast to those whose patience or stubborn faith opens closed doors so we might rise again and turn toward the charismatic. Under the hardest carapace, the promise of the blood’s radiant fluorescence.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
