I will wade out

i will wade out
##############till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
################################################Alive
######################################with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
##################################in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
###########################################Will i complete the mystery
###########################################of my flesh
I will rise
#######################After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
################And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

ee cummings

Reassurance for the elderly

Here, Touch Here, Just Beneath the Ribs

(for D)
Here, touch here, just beneath the ribs you kissed when you were nearly twenty-three and I was a girl knee-deep in meadow, fescue, timothy, mustard, the wild ginger I had just learned from my grandmother a few weeks before we met. Dancing in that bar, that night, I wanted to tell you how to spot wild ginger, how Carolina, where we both grew, banned spreading cornflower seeds, and I most wanted to tell that you smelled of sweet clover, and sun. In my silence, I named you shining one. Later, while you slept, I whispered secrets into your hair – how black snake root would keep you strong, rue and thistle protect you, how the plant I named as spikenard – lavender – would lead you in my direction, when our time came. In the morning, I left rosemary behind, that you might, just might, remember. Because as false at times as desire may seem, it isn’t. Nor is the humid wish for love, steaming, sweating, our second skins, those made of glass, the ones we fear the most, will shatter.

Mary Carroll-Hackett

sunset

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.

John Steinbeck
The Winter of Our Discontent