Poinsettias
I know you needed many
hours of darkness
to bloom
you burned for us
in place of
sun and usually
you’ll re-green
then wither, but you’ll
come back
in another
year
if you are fed
right intervals of night
is the brevity
of your splendor worth
the blindness
of your hunger?
I think of all my friends
Woody Guthrie
Which is missing –
The seed or the soil?
Which came first –
The wind or the dust?
I tried to cup the candle with my hand,
But the flame licked my thumb.
*
Definite and unrecorded,
Darkness is ahistorical –
Erasing the horizon,
The geometry.
*
Don’t despair
Of forgetting the shape;
A circle doesn’t need to know that it
Is round because it’s coming back around.
*
I’ll meet you in the garden when it’s morning.
P.G. McNabb lives and writes in Minneapolis. You can also read him in Reap Thrill and SPECTRA.