Buy Heart Work
at Amazon.com

Postcard from Pierson Place

We never ate breakfast
in the honeymoon gazebo
though I did manage to swim
in the pond
before you fed me
to a rage so greedy
it finally took even your life.

Returning here four years later
as someone else’s wife
I breakfast in the overgrown patio
by the Cupid fountain
late afternoon ease into the pond
less clogged by weeds—and colder—
than I remember

dozens of tadpoles circulating under me.



Sad Flowers
     after Howard Hodgkin

Because their brilliance is so redundant yet redemptive.

Because we come to them with doubts
about the beautiful almost religious.

Because the names we have given them—
Indian Paintbrush, Owl Clover, Yellow Adder’s-tongue,
Goat’s Rue, Prairie-Thistle, Scarlet Monkey-flower,
Prairie Beard-tongue—upstage them.

Because a memory swiped from the Bay of Naples outlasts them.

Because they heal as they die.

Because we trim their budding profusions
and love them for a day before
they droop and fade and fail us.

Because we insist we prefer their steady colors
when our heads turn at a mere squiggle
or waver or smudge or ripple or splotch.