RADIANT GERANIUMS
I require nothing more of you
than your extravagant redness,
but wonder are you pensive or restless
sitting in pots on my indoor porch?
Do you hear the creak of crows outside
as loneliness or desire for spring?
Perhaps you’d rather the romance
of a window-box, green shutters
against a white-washed house,
your petals drifting through air,
until they punctuate the cobblestones
below, where framed in the doorway,
a widow stands in black. Or do you long
for your roots to grow uncontained, scrawling
down and down forever through dirt?
I am a widow now myself.
As he did, I bend to dead-head
your crumpling blossoms,
snap your stems just at the joint
where they attach to the whole.
There are no answers.
Only your earthy, lemon-pepper,
alive
green scent.
This has more softness, aroma and dependants than any red wheelbarrow.