Linda: An Anthology of Everything and Anything Flowers

LINDA

an anthology of anything & everything flowers

Compiled by Danni Go

LINDA

an anthology of anything & everything flowers

Compiled by Danni Go

FOREWORD Flowers can mean many things. To me, flowers represent my Lola (which means grandmother in Filipino). Her name was Linda, and she passed away in 2015. Since then, no day has passed where I don’t think about her.

She had an infinite love for flowers, one unlike any other. Our house would be filled with flowers–from the bushes lining the gates to the flowerbeds of every window and balcony we had. She didn’t have a favorite one in particular because she equally loved and found beauty in every single one she came across, which is a reflection of who she was as a person. She always saw the good in people, never failing to treat everyone with kindness.

Her love for flowers was one of the many things I inherited from her.

Wherever I go, I am instantly drawn to flowers, always finding myself wanting to surround myself in them. Surrounding myself with flowers surrounds me with the presence of my Lola, Linda.

Linda is an anthology containing 40 pieces of writing related to flowers, each piece varying from the next, demonstrating the several meanings and symbols flowers are uniquely associated with. It includes poems, short stories, excerpts, and songs compiled by yours truly, with some holding personal meaning, such as "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music, a song near and dear to my family's heart.

Linda is an homage to my Lola, the rarest flower I have ever had the pleasure of encountering in my life.

Danni Go LINDA 03

TABLE OF CONTENTS 06-07

14

22-23

SUNFLOWER FOOL

PICKING FLOWERS

EDELWEISS

Written by Lauren Peterson Photos by Matthias Oberholzer & Annie Spratt

Written by Nate Marshall

15

08

GROTESQUE

IF CAUSALITY IS IMPOSSIBLE, GENESIS IS RECURRENT

16-17

Written by Hyam Plutzik

09 GOLDENROD Written by Lenore E. Mulets

10-11 HOW THE SWEETBRIAR BECAME PINK Written by Lenore E. Mulets Photo by Annie Spratt

12-13 DAISY NURSES Written by Lenore E. Mulets Photo by Karina Vorozheeva

From The Sound of Music Photo by Karelian13 on AdobeStock

24-25

Written by Amy Lowell

BELLINGLISE Written by Alan Seeger Photo by Anton Darius

PETALS Written by Amy Lowell Photo by Juliana Arruda

26 A WOMAN HAD PLACED Written by Anne Blonstein

18-19 GRANDMOTHER'S GARDEN Written by Dorothy Grey Photo by Annie Spratt

27 BOTANICA Written by Eve Alexandra

20

28

MY FIRST ROSES

GIRL

Written by Ira Sadoff

21 TO DAFFODILS Written by Robert Herrick

Written by Eve Alexandra Photo by Anita Austvika

29 LETTERS Written by Frances Richey Photo by Thomas Cigolla

LINDA 04

30-31

42-43

53

MEISTER ECHKLART'S SERMON ON FLOWERS AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S REPLY

CHERRY BLOSSOMS

POEM

Written by J. Michael Martinez

32-33 SUPERMARKET FLOWERS Written by Ed Sheeran Photos by Natalie Ireland & Kylie Paz

34-35 BLOSSOMS Written by Dorianne Laux Photo by Daniel Jensen

36-37 ELEGY COMPOSED IN THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN Written by Eugenia Leigh

Written by Tori Derricotte Photo by Tim Gouw

44 FLOWER GATHERING Written by Robert Frost

IN APRIL

Written by Matthew Yeager Photo by Annie Spratt

46 SPENT Written by Mark Doty

41 TWO LITTLE ROSES Written by Julia P. Ballard

Written by James Hearst

58 THE METIER OF BLOSSOMING Written by Denise Levertov

47

59

A LOVE SONG

FAR AND AWAY [EXCERPT]

Written by William Carlos Williams

TO DOROTHY

Written by Hyam Plutzik

Written by Andrew Hudgins Photo by Florencia Viadana

56-57

48-49

SPRIG OF LILAC

BLUR

SONNET W/ ROSE

POPPIES

40

54-55

45

38-39 Written by Henri Cole Photos by Henry Be

Written by John Gray

Written by Fanny Howe Photo by Vanessa Ochotorena

50-51

Written by Marvin Bell Photos by Fabian Mardi & Nikita Burdin

THE ORCHID FLOWER Written by Sam Hamill Photo by Berlian Khatulistiwa

50-51

61-62

THE FOOLISH PANSY

PRACTICE

Written by Jenny Wallis Photo by TorangeBiz

52 THE GARDENIA Written by Cornelius Eady LINDA 05

Written by Ellen Bryant Voigt Photo by Konstantin Dyadyun

SUNFLOWER FOOL Best friends forever. A pinky swear and secret handshake seal the deal.

Bracelets burst with charms. Friendship is difficult to encapsulate.

Every fear and fetish, they understand. Every disappointment and dream, they comfort and support.

Forever means an ear is keen to listen, a hand is ready with tissues, and feet await a spontaneous dance party. An unwavering confidant matters to me because I was an insecure freshman when the forever flickered. Mocking laughter and stifled whispers

LINDA 06

rang in my ears as I watched my jar of secrets being spilled and shattered in the school cafeteria. Without a shoulder to cry on, I found myself staring at the musty bathroom stall door, red- eyed and broken.

Lingering in class after the lunch bell rang meant a shortened time wandering the halls for a place to eat, probably alone. I relied on myself and built a concrete wall around my heart. Forever became intangible.

That is, until I stumbled across a shy fifteen-yearold. Her sunflower shorts screamed “come talk to me� though her face said otherwise. Three years after a simple hello, I look back and remember the one person who transformed every frown into a smile, who lifted my head when I lost faith in myself, who danced like nobody was watching, who knew the real me, and who made the biggest difference in my life.

An unexpected friendship taught me to live confidently and ignore the snide whispers. I hope each individual finds their pair of sunflower shorts.

LAUREN PETERSON

LINDA 07

IF CAUSALITY IS IMPOSSIBLE, The abrupt appearance of a yellow flower Out of the perfect nothing, is miraculous.

The sum of Being, being discontinuous, Must presuppose a God-out-of-the-box Who makes a primal garden of each garden.

There is no change, but only re-creation One step ahead. As in the cinema Upon the screen, all motion is illusory.

So if your mind were keener and could clinch More than its flitting beachhead in the Permanent, You’d see a twinkling world flashing and dying Projected out of a tireless, winking Eye Opening and closing in immensity— Creating, with its look, beside all else Always Adamic passion and innocence The bloodred apple or the yellow flower.

Hyam Plutzik

GENESIS IS RECURRENT LINDA 08

GOLDENROD How in the world did I happen to bloom All by myself alone, By the side of a dusty, country road, With only a rough old stone

But all of a sudden she ceased her plaint, For a child’s voice cried in glee,

“For company?”

“Here’s a dear little lovely goldenrod!

Did you bloom on purpose for me?"

And the goldenrod, As she drooped her yellow head, Gave a mournful sigh.

“Down by the brook the tall spirea And the purple asters nod, And beckon to me–but more than all

“Who cares for me,

Do I love you, goldenrod!”

Or knows I’m alive?” she said.

She raised the flower to her rosy lips, And merrily kissed its face,

“A snow-white daisy I’d like to be, Half-hid in the cool green sod: Or a pink spirea, or sweet wild rose–

“Ah! now I see,” said the goldenrod,

But I’m only a goldenrod.”

“Nobody knows that I’m here, nor cares. Whether I live or die! Lovers of beautiful flowers, who wants such a common thing as I?”

LINDA 09

"How this is the very place That was meant for me; and I’m glad I bloomed. Just here by the road alone, with nobody near for company But a dear old mossy stone!”

Lenore E. Mulets

HOW SWEETBRIAR

THE

Eve was young, and she walked in the Garden of Eden. Countless as the stars were the nodding heads of the flowers of her garden. Sweeter than the perfume of a hundred summer-times was the fragrance of her blossoms.

Eve looked again and again, and was never weary.

She wandered for many happy hours in her Garden of Eden.

One morning, she again walked forth, she spied a rose of purest white. It was the sweetbriar, and when Eve approached, delighted with the blossom, the whole plant sent out from every leaf a sweet, delicate perfume. The pure white rose lifted its cup eagerly.

“Ah,” said Eve to the white sweetbriar rose, “you are beautiful. You are exquisitely sweet!”

She drew the blossom down to her and kissed its white petals with her sweet red lips.

So when the sweetbriar rose swung back to its place its petals were pale pink. They had drunk the colour from Eve’s red lips.

Lenore E. Mulets

BECAME

PINK LINDA 11

DAISY NURSES The daisies white are nursery maids, With frills upon their caps; And daisy buds are little babies They tend upon their laps.

Sing Heigh ho! while the wind sweeps low, Both nurses and babies are nodding–just so.

The daisy babies never cry, The nurses never scold; They never crush the dainty frills About their cheeks of gold; But prim and white in gay sunlight They’re nid–nid–nodding–pretty sight!

The daisies love the golden sun, Up in the clear blue sky; He gazes kindly down at them, And winks his joyful eye, While soft and slow, all in row, Both nurses and babies are nodding–just so.

Lenore E. Mulets

LINDA LINDA 12 12

LINDA 13

PICKING FLOWERS Grandma’s rosebush reminiscent of a Vice Lord’s do-rag.

i’m on the express train passing stops to a woman. maybe she’s home.

the unfamiliar bloom in Mrs. Bradley’s yard banging a Gangster Disciple style blue.

i have a bouquet in my hand, laid on 1 of my arms like a shotgun.

the dandelions all over the park putting on Latin King gold like the Chicano cats

the color is brilliant, a gang war wrapped & cut diagonal at the stems.

over east before they turn into a puff of smoke like all us colored boys.

i am not a flower salesman. that is the only thing i know.

Nate Marshall

picking dandelions will ruin your hands, turn their smell into a bitter cologne. a man carries flowers for 3 reasons: • he is in love • he is in mourning • he is a flower salesman

LINDA 14

GROTESQUE Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me When I pluck them; And writhe, and twist, And strangle themselves against my fingers, So that I can hardly weave the garland For your hair?

Why do they shriek your name and spit at me When I would cluster them?

Must I kill them To make them lie still, And send you a wreath of lolling corpses To turn putrid and soft On your forehead While you dance?

Amy Lowell

LINDA 15

PETALS

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal

by

the flower of our heart; The end lost in a dream

petal

They f l o a t past our view, Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We t r a s e t c the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their We never shall know.

And the stream as it f l o w s Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond

distant employ,

into infinite ways.

We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays Amy Lowell LINDA 17

GRAND MOTHER’S GARDEN Stately and prim grew the hollyhocks tall, In grandmother’s garden against the wall; Fairest of flower-duennas were they, Keeping good watch through the long summer day.

Close by the was the sunshiny corner, where The foxgloves swayed in the balmy air, And nodded across to the larkspurs blue, And the pleasant nook where the columbines grew.

There were cinnamon-roses, and, low at their feet, The shadowy cluster of day-lilies sweet, And mignonette modest, and pensive heart’s-ease, And boy’s love, and candytuft, sweet in the breeze.

LINDA 18

And, first every morn by the sun to be kissed, Grew, all in a tangle, fair love-in-a-mist, With bachelor’s-buttons, and sweet williams gay, And spice pinks for neighbours just over the way; There were sweet peas coquettish, most festive of flowers, And four-o’clocks sturdy to mark off the hours, And frail morning-glories that laughed in the light At the phlox and verbenas, pink, purple, and white.

Ah! the days were so bright, and so sweet was the air, And in grandmother’s garden all life looked so fair!

Dorothy Grey LINDA 19

MY FIRST ROSES My first roses brought me to my senses.

All my furies, I launched them like paper boats in the algaed pond behind my house.

First they were pale, then peach and blood red.

You could be merciless trimming them back.

You could be merciless and I needed that.

Emerald green with crimson tips, these were no crowns of thorns.

They would not portend nor intimate.

But if you fed them they’d branch out: two generations in a single summer.

One had a scent of fruit & violet, the other blazed up, a flotilla of lips on the lawn Ira Sadoff

LINDA 20

TO DAFFODILS

Fair daffodils! we weep to see You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon: Stay, stay

Until the hastening day Has run But to the evensong; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along

We have short time to stay as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything: We die, As your hours do; and dry Away Like to the summer’s rain, Or as the pearls of morning dew, Ne’er to be found again.

Robert Herrick

LINDA 21

EDELWEISS Edelweiss, edelweiss, Ev’ry morning you greet me Small and white Clean and bright You look happy to meet me Blossom of snow May you bloom and grow Bloom and grow forever Edelweiss, edelweiss Bless my homeland forever The Sound of Music

LINDA 23

BELLINGLISE

LINDA LINDA 24 24

i.

Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know, Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds Of Bellinglise, the beautiful château.

Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, It was my joy to come at dusk and see, Filling a little pond’s untroubled glass, Its antique towers and mouldering masonry.

Oh, should I fall to-morrow, lay me here, That o’er my tomb, with each reviving year, Wood-flowers may blossom and the wood-doves croon; And lovers by that unrecorded place, Passing, may pause, and cling a little space, Close-bosomed, at the rising of the moon. ii.

Here, where in happier times the huntsman’s horn Echoing from far made sweet midsummer eves, Now serried cannon thunder night and morn, Tearing with iron the greenwood’s tender leaves. yet has sweet Spring no particle withdrawn Of her old bounty; still the song-birds hail, Even through our fusillade, delightful Dawn; Even in our wire bloom lilies of the vale.

You who love flowers, take these; their fragile bells Have trembled with the shock of volleyed shells, And in black nights when stealthy foes advance They have been lit by the pale rockets’ glow That o’er scarred fields and ancient towns laid low Trace in white fire the brave frontiers of France.

Alan Seeger LINDA 25

A WOMAN HAD PLACED after jorge luis borges a yellow rose in a hotel glass the man had kissed her on the neck had kissed her on the mouth but these kisses belonged to yesterday there would be no moment of revernalization yellow roses came from china open in may before our hybrids unfold pink rugosities and baroque scent expose dusty fissured yellow pearls Anne Blonstein

LINDA 26

BOTANICA They are everywhere--those sunflowers with the coal heart center. They riot without speaking, huge, wet mouths caught at half-gasp, half-kiss.

I stare at my reflection, a posy of wishes. Morning glory, nightshade, tulip, rhododendron.

Flowers she promises I’ll grow into, sweet gardener, long luminous braids I’d climb like ladders, freckles scattered across our shoulders in a spell of pollen. She’s sleeping there--on that table

White. Waiting.

with its veneer slick as a glass coffin. She’s fed us fiddleheads, the tine fists of Brussels sprouts, cupcakes, even the broken song of the deer’s neck. Singing.

Flowers everywhere. In my bedroom chaste daisies and the vigilance of chrysanthemums. Dirt under my nails, pressing my cheek to the shag rug with its million fingers.

You could lose anything: a tooth, Barbie’s shoe, this prayer.

She loves me. She loves me not.

In this poem I would be the Wicked Witch and she Snow My father talks to me about their lovemaking. My mouth empty as a lily. I try to remember the diagram. Which is the pistil? Which is the stamen?

Roads of desire circle our house: Lost Nation Severance, Poor Farm. Branches catch the wings of my nightgown.

There is a crow and the smell of blackberries.

Eve Alexandra

LINDA 27

GIRL Be careful if you take this flower into your house. The peony has a thousand lips. It is pink and white like the lady’s skirt and smells sharp and sweet as cinnamon. There are a thousand ants living inside but you will only see one or two at a time. I am like that down there—pink and busy inside. The dark is a bolt of cloth, crushed and blue, and I unfurl against it. If you lie down on the floor of the closet the hems of silk will lick you. My own gown is thin as the skin of dried grass so I can see the ants dancing down there. The night has big paws. I imagine the wool of the bears, the cloth of monkeys. the night smells like vetiver and cedar. His mouth is cool with mint and warm with rum, and I am not afraid as he rubs his wool against me. I saw the bear dancing at the circus when I was small. He was wearing a green felt cap with gold brica-brac and kept by a thin wire thread. My brother bought me a sucker for the train ride home, and I am like that now on the inside, burning soft with lemon. What fruit do you like best? I like tangerines. And the night leaves me these. A small paper bag on the bedside table. The wrought iron and roses like an altar. I am glowing now. My teeth are stitching kisses to my fist. I go to the river. My legs are frogs legs. Tiny wands, see how they glisten. A thousand fish swim through me. I am a boat now. I know no anchor. My hair unfurls, copper and cinnamon. Look how it opens, beautiful world.

Eve Alexandra

LINDA 28

LETTERS 1.

2.

Before he left for combat, he took care of everything: someone to plow the driveway, cut the grass.

And the letter he wrote me, just in case, sealed, somewhere, in a drawer; can’t be opened, must be opened if he doesn’t return.

I feel for my keys, hear his voice: Less is better. Late for work, still, I linger at the window of the Century Florist, a bowl of peonies, my face among the tulips.

Last Mother’s Day, when he was incommunicado, nothing came.

Three days later, a message in my box; a package, the mail room closed.

I went out into the lobby, banged my fist against the desk. When they gave it to me, I clutched it to my chest, sobbing like an animal.

I spoke to no one, did not apologize.

I didn’t care about the gift.

It was the note I wanted, the salt from his hand, the words.

Frances Richey LINDA 29

MEISTER ECKHART’S A hollowed singularity exists in flowers like pathos in a dandelion: an eddy of fate, degreeless, silvering through memory.

A scabbed consonant departing the sentence: locust petal, bromeliad, a surfacing shame, lightless, beyond hearing.

Solitary, the clock circumvents sound and a horse importunes a wasp bowing before significance.

It is in fact doubtless a wasp bows before significance degreeless in a dandelion.

SERMON ON

FLOWERS LINDA 30

AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S It also stands to reason that, in a clock, locusts circumvent memory in order to depart through fate.

And anyone can see that singularity exists lightless like an eddy of pathos surfacing beyond hearing.

In conclusion, however solitary (and you know this as well as I), a consonant will always depart the sentence before shamed by a horse.

J. Michael Martinez

REPLY LINDA 31

LINDA 32

SUPERMARKET FLOWERS I took the supermarket flowers from the windowsill I threw the day old tea from the cup Packed up the photo album Matthew had made Memories of a life that’s been loved

John says he’d drive then put his hand on my cheek And wiped a tear from the side of my face I hope that I see the world as you did cause I know A life with love is a life that’s been lived So I’ll sing Hallelujah

Took the get well soon cards and stuffed animals

You were an angel in the shape of my mum When I fell down you’d be there holding me up Spread your wings as you go And when God takes you back we’ll say Hallelujah You’re home

Poured the old ginger beer down the sink Dad always told me, “don’t you cry when you’re down” But mum, there’s a tear every time that I blink Oh I’m in pieces, it’s tearing me up, but I know A heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved

Hallelujah You were an angel in the shape of my mum You got to see the person that I have become Spread your wing And I know that when God took you back he said Hallelujah You’re home

So I’ll sing Hallelujah You were an angel in the shape of my mum When I fell down you’d be there holding me up Spread your wings as you go And when God takes you back we’ll say Hallelujah You’re home

Ed Sheeran

I fluffed the pillows, made the beds, stacked the chairs up Folded your nightgowns neatly in a case LINDA 33

LINDA 34

BLOSSOMS What is a wound but a flower dying on its descent to the earth, bag of scent filled with war, forest, torches, some trouble that befell now over and done. A wound is a fire sinking into itself. The tinder serves only so long, the log holds on and still it gives up, collapses into its bed of ashes and sand. I burned my hand cooking over a low flame, that flame now alive under my skin, the smell not unpleasant, the wound beautiful as a full-blown peony.

Say goodbye to disaster. Shake hands with the unknown, what becomes of us once we’ve been torn apart and returned to our future, naked and small, sewn back together scar by scar.

Dorianne Laux

LINDA 35

ELEGY

COMPOSED Catmint—tubular, lavender, an ointment to blur the scar, bloom the skin. My mouth has begun the hunt for words that heal.

In the garden, I am startled by a cluster of sun-colored petals marked, Radiation.

Piles of radiation.

Orange radiation, huddled together like families bound by a hospital-bright morning.

And behind them: a force of yuccas called Golden Swords. A bush or mound

IN THE LINDA 36

NEW BOTANICAL

YORK

of sheath-like leaves sprouting from a proud center.

And isn’t that the plot?

First the radiation, then the golden sword.

I remember, incurably, your mother. The laughter that flowered from her lips. I’m sorry I have no good words to honor her war. It crumbled me to watch you overwhelmed by her face in the daffodils outside your childhood home.

Eugenia Leigh

GARDEN LINDA 37

POPPIES Waking from comalike sleep, I saw the poppies, with their limp necks and unregimented beauty P a u s e , I thought, say something true: It was night, I wanted to kiss your lips, which remained supple, but all the water in them had been replaced with embalming compound. So I was angry.

I loved the poppies, with their wide-open faces, how they carried themselves, beckoning to me instead of pushing away.

The way in and the way out are the same, essentially: emotions disrupting thought, proximity to God, the pain of separation.

I loved the poppies, with their effortless existence, like grief and fate, but tempered and formalized.

Your hair was black and curly; I combed it.

Henri Cole

LINDA 38

LINDA 39

SPRIG OF LILAC Their heads grown weary under the weight of Time— These few hours on the hither side of silence— The lilac sprigs bend on the bough to perish.

Though each for its own sake is beautiful, In each is the greater, the remembered beauty.

Each is exemplar of its ancestors.

Within the flower of the present, uneasy in the wind, Are the forms of those of the years behind the door.

Their faint aroma touches the edge of the mind.

And the living and the past give to one another.

There is no door between them. They pass freely Out of themselves; becoming one another.

I see the lilac sprigs bending and withering.

Each year like Adonis they pass through the dumb-show of death, Waxing and waning on the tree in the brain of a man.

Hyam Plutzik

LINDA 40

TWO LITTLE ROSES One merry summer day Two roses were at play; All at once they took a notion They would like to run away!

Queer little roses, Funny little roses, To like to run away!

They stole along my fence; They clambered up my wall; They climbed into my window To make a morning call!

Queer little roses, Funny little roses, To make a morning call!

Julia P. Ballard.

LINDA 41

LINDA 42

CHERRY BLOSSOMS I went down to mingle my breath with the breath of the cherry blossoms.

A young woman in a fur-trimmed coat sets a card table with linens, candles, a picnic basket & wine.

There were photographers: Mothers arranging their children against gnarled old trees; a couple, hugging, asks a passerby to snap them like that, so that their love will always be caught between two friendships: ours & the friendship of the cherry trees.

A father tips a boy’s wheelchair back so he can gaze up at a branched heaven.

All around us the blossoms flurry down whispering, Be patient you have an ancient beauty.

Oh Cherry, why can’t my poems be as beautiful?

Be patient, you have an ancient beauty.

Toi Derricotte

LINDA 43

FLOWER I left you in the morning, And in the morning glow, You walked a way beside me To make me sad to go.

Do you know me in the gloaming,

Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?

Are you dumb because you know me not,

Or dumb because you know?

All for me?

And not a question For the faded flowers gay That could take me from beside you

For the ages of a day?

They are yours, and be the measure Of their worth for you to treasure, The measure of the little while That I’ve been long away.

Robert Frost

GATHERING LINDA 44

SONNET W/ ROSE When I see you after so long not seeing you it is like picking up in side a fist the

r

e

d

floppe d

petals

of a drooped red rose, and when you speak in the voice that could only be yours it is like staring into my fist top’s opening and seeing the rose as the rose once was. This is not just to say that the

s

nd sweet wi ness rl a

soon flops back open to what now is, though it does, but that when I see you after so long not seeing you I make sense of my feeling in terms of the rose, and carry it past goodbye.

Matthew Yeager LINDA 45

SPENT Late August morning I go out to cut spent and faded hydrangeas—washed greens, russets, troubled little auras

the dazzling splotchy flowerheads scattered around me on the floor.

Will leaving the world be the same

of sky as if these were the very silks of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin then half-restored, after all this time…

—uncertainty as to how to proceed, some discomfort, and suddenly you’re —where? I am so involved with this idea

When I come back with my handful I realize I’ve accidentally locked the door, and can’t get back into the house.

I forget to unlock the door, so when I go to fetch the mail, I’m locked out again. Am I at home in this house,

The dining room window’s easiest;crawl

would I prefer to be out here,

through beauty bush and spirea, push aside some errant maples, take down

where I could be almost anyone?

This time it’s simpler: the window-frame,

the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up. But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill and the radiator down to the tile?

the radiator, my descent. Born twice in one day! In their silvered jug, these bruise-blessed flowers:

I try bending one leg in, but I don’t fold readily; I push myself up so that my waist rests against the sill, and lean forward,

how hard I had to work to bring them into this room. When I say spent, I don’t mean they have no further coin.

place my hands on the floor and begin to slide down into the room, which makes me think this was what it was like to be born: awkward, too big for the passageway…

Negotiate, submit?

If there are lives to come, I think they might be a littler easier than this one.

When I give myself to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,

LINDA 46

Mark Doty

A LOVE SONG I lie here thinking of you:—

the stain of love is upon the world!

Ye l l o w , y e l l o w , y e l l o w it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky!

There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world— you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west!

William Carlos Williams

LINDA 47

LINDA 48

TO DOROTHY You are not beautiful, exactly.

You are beautiful, inexactly.

You let a weed grow by the mulberry and a mulberry grow by the house.

So close, in the personal quiet of a windy night, it brushes the wall and sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true: “Things that are lost are all equal.”

But it isn’t true.

If I lost you, the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow. Someone would pull the weed, my flower. The quiet wouldn’t be yours.

If I lost you, I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

Marvin Bell

LINDA 49

THE FOOLISH A dainty little pansy Stood on one toe, S t r e t c h e d her pretty head, And wanted to know

PANSY Your choice you’re sure to rue; To soar aloft, on restless wing, Is not for such as you.”

up

Why she was tethered fast, Just to one spot, While zephyrs could w a n d e r Where she could not.

“O gentle Queen of Fairies,” I heard her softly say, “Please cut the ties that bind me, And bid me fly away.

“I know I’m far too pretty So hidden here to lie; To look abroad and see the world, I’m sure I’d like to try.”

“O foolish little pansy,

LINDA 50

But the pretty pansy pouted, And not a smile was seen, While sadly leaned above her The gentle Fairy Queen.

So, weary of her sulking, At length she waved her wand; And pansy f l e w a w a y,

away, She thought to Fairy-land.

The zephyrs changed to breezes, Then fast and faster blew,

And soon beside the river The pretty pansy threw.

She fainted there, and perished Upon that pebbly shore.

Then leaning o’er the water, She started back in fright; For, in that faithful mirror, She saw a fearful sight.

Thus ends my little story; For, down beneath the wave, This foolish little pansy Soon found a lonely grave.

Her truant ways and temper Had seamed her forehead o’er With wrinkles and with bruises,– Her beauty was no more.

Shall I not take this lesson, And feel content to rest Where God in love has placed me, Assured His choice is best?

Too late she saw her error, Too late she sighed full sore;

Jenny Wallis

LINDA 51

THE GARDENIA The trouble is, you can never take That flower from Billie’s hair.

She is always walking too fast and try as we might, there’s no talking her into slowing.

Don’t go down into that basement, we’d like to scream. What will it take to bargain her blues, To retire that term when it comes to her? But the grain and the cigarettes, the narcs and the fancy-dressed boys, the sediment in her throat.

That’s the soil those petals spring from, Like a fist, if a fist could sing.

Cornelius Eady

LINDA 52

POEM To Arthur Edmonds Geranium, houseleek, laid in oblong beds On the trim grass. The daisies’ leprous stain Is fresh. Each night the daisies burst again, Though every day the gardener crops their heads.

A wistful child, in foul unwholesome shreds, Recalls some legend of a daisy chain That makes a pretty necklace. She would fain Make one, and wear it, if she had some threads.

Sun, leprous flowers, foul child. The asphalt burns.

The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns.

Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings.

He does not sing, he only wonders why He is sitting there. The sparrows sing. And I Yield to the strait allure of simple things.

John Gray

LINDA 53

BLUR Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle, lilac, clover—and drift across the threshold, outside reclaiming inside as its home.

Warm days whirl in a bright unnumberable blur, a cup—a grail brimmed with delirium and humbling boredom both.

I was a boy, I thought I’d always be a boy, pell—mell, mean, and gaily murderous one moment as I decapitated daises with a stick, then overcome with summer’s opium, numb—slumberous.

I thought I’d always be a boy, each day its own millennium, each one thousand years of daylight ending in the night watch, summer’s pervigilium, which I could never keep because by sunset

I understood with horror then with joy, dubious and luminous joy: it simply spins.

It doesn’t need my feet to make it turn. It doesn’t even need my eyes to watch it, and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I’d be leaving early. It was my duty to stay awake and sing if I could keep my mind on singing, not extinction, as blurred green summer, lifted to its apex, succumbed to gravity and fell to autumn, Ilium, and ashes. In joy we are our own uncomprehending mourners, and more than joy I longed for understanding and more than understanding I longed for joy.

I was an old man. I was Methuselah, the oldest man in the holy book. I drowsed.

I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world, whose permanence I doubted, returned again, bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal still there when the light swept back, and so was I, which I had also doubted.

Andrew Hudgins

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LINDA 55

IN APRIL This I saw on an April day: Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud, A sky-flung wave of gold at evening, And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path Shy and proud.

And this I found in an April field: A new white calf in the sun at noon, A flash of blue in a cool moss bank, And tips of tulips promising flowers To a blue-winged loon.

And this I tried to understand As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow: The movement of seed in furrowed earth, And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear From a green-sprayed bough.

James Hearst

LINDA 56

THE METIER Fully occupied with growing—that’s the amaryllis. Growing especially at night: it would take only a bit more patience than I’ve got to sit keeping watch with it till daylight; the naked eye could register every hour’s increase in height. Like a child against a barn door, proudly topping each year’s achievement, steadily up goes each green stem, smooth, matte, traces of reddish purple at the base, and almost imperceptible vertical ridges running the length of them: Two robust stems from each bulb, sometimes with sturdy leaves for company, elegant sweeps of blade with rounded points.

Aloft, the gravid buds, shiny with fullness.

One morning—and so soon! the first flower has opened when you wake.

Or you catch it poised in a single, brief moment of hesitation.

Next day, another, shy at first like a foal, even a third, a fourth, carried triumphantly at the summit of those strong columns, and each a Juno, calm in brilliance, a maiden giantess in modest splendor.

If humans could be that intensely whole, undistracted, unhurried, swift from sheer unswerving impetus! If we could blossom out of ourselves, giving nothing imperfect, withholding nothing!

Denise Levertov

OF BLOSSOMING LINDA 57

FAR AND AWAY [EXCERPT] The rain falls on.

Acres of violets unfold.

Dandelion, mayflower Myrtle and forsythia follow.

What is a poet but a person Who lives on the ground Who laughs and listens

The cardinals call to each other.

Echoes of delicate Breath-broken whistles.

Without pretension of knowing Anything, driven by the lyric’s Quest for rest that never (God willing) will be found?

I know something now About subject, object, verb And about one word that fails For lack of substance.

Concord, kitchen table, 1966.

Corbetts, Creeley, a grandmother And me. Sweater, glasses, One wet eye.

Now people say, He passed on Instead of that. Unit Of space subtracted by one.

It almost rhymes with earth.

Lots of laughter Before and after. Every meeting Rhymed and fluttered into meter.

The beat was the message. . . .

(for Robert Creeley) Fanny Howe

LINDA 58

THE ORCHID FLOWER Just as I wonder whether it’s going to die, the orchid blossoms

pistil and stamen, pollen, dew of the world, a spoonful

and I can’t explain why it moves my heart, why such pleasure comes from one small bud on a long spindly stem, one blood red gold flower

of earth, and water.

Erotic because there’s death at the heart of birth, drama in those old sunrise prisms in wet cedar boughs, deepest mystery in washing evening dishes or teasing my wife,

opening at mid-summer, tiny, perfect in its hour.

Even to a whitehaired craggy poet, it’s purely erotic,

who grows, yes, more beautiful because one of us will die.

Sam Hamill

LINDA 59

PRACTICE To weep unbidden, to wake at night in order to weep, to wait for the whisker on the face of the clock to twitch again, moving the dumb day forward— is this merely practice?

Some believe in heaven, some in rest. We’ll float, you said. Afterward we’ll float between two worlds— five bronze beetles stacked like spoons in one peony blossom, drugged by lust: if I came back as a bird I’d remember that— until everyone we love is safe is what you said.

Ellen Bryant Voigt

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LINDA 61