Dandelions, approximate to love
“an oblivial force dwells within that reminds us daily…”--Rick Harsch
And slow the stories dismounted the handles of our verbs
tongues wagged wayward toward a star anise sky,
a collapsing algebra along the escarpment’s frozen Niagara night
there we fell away, once
a renegade March where a herd of shadows stood up in the light
dream plunged through a sinkhole of flight,
clusters of color cracked, no matter the cold
and we were floral
medallions of dandelions bruising with song and woodwind long ago
he a young boy as his father wiggled him through the city
she nuance laying along the hips of the sloppy Hudson
together they pulled at birds flocking in their hands
weeds peonied steel roses ivying up the walls along Christopher Street
when a father tugged the child kicking up cans along the Village’s gateway
brothers’ gangfilled love and legends curlyhaired echoed on the fire escape
love’s labor later tossed along the hips of a sloppy Hudson
the mudbanks upstate in the valley
and bricks bloomed and pollinated lore through a thin stem of meaning.
let the worldworld behold
let the dreamdream inhale
let the oblivial force dwell in the understory
a photograph’s thought faded from the image and dogeared
twice the terrain unbuttoned from underneath
the horizon a finger of wet chicory
along the sea trees taught flowers to stone
the land fecund with opossum and beetle bone
a heart left behind in a rusted octagon box
cicada shells exhaled into the side of a tree, a thumbprint of time
and the tempo rescued from the lumber, sand and swamp.
The frozen stories we shared beneath the falling water
the thawing dandelions of yesterdays’ goodbyes
the clockwork of your morse code along my wrist
the takeaways and the somedays and the bend in the river, once
the reverie and the recounting
the soil and the songs
the lives an error approximate to love
as we carried history in small thimbles of cinnamon
the pollen dust of the tillage kicked up by boots
the crimson and the leaves oar-rot black over which stepped a journey
and your measure unflagging, the flair once pedaling along the sky’s dresswork.
My love,
to this day we step lightly over flowerbeds of cast away giants’ and Goliath’s bones
a graveyard of lost fables, the gossamer map of things
and with the weight of a coin in our palm
loss lead us home to our watery selves
together and at last alone, we remain long in this world.
for 4 lights on the horizon: Wan-Lin Yang, Mai Huyen Chi, Chiwan Choi and Natashia Deon, wanderers
