For Anita
When the birds invaded the wild parsnip
and rot carved black smudges
like a cancer in the Queen Anne’s lace,
and when the dame’s rocket and yellow iris
were flooded by a sudden storm squall
that flatted them down like royal princesses
in ruined dresses, she wandered down
into the lonesome motherwort
to gather the whorls of white flowers
into her broken little arms for the funeral.
And when the sweet clover and garlic mustard
grew heavenward in the dry sun,
she knelt there at the edge of the pond,
waiting for a bird she had heard
calling out to the wind to come back down again
to her, so she could hear it sing. And when night fell,
when she knew her mother would never
return – because death had flooded her
just like bad blood floods the eyes of an animal
just before it crawls off and it dies –
she wandered to the open edge of the bog
where the nodding ladies’ tresses grew wild there
in their décor of white flowers spiraling up thin
adolescent bodies getting ready for their
autumn dancing: and then she laced them –
one-by-one – to the sides of her head,
where she flowered them there in her braids
for the next joyful dancing – and for all the dances
that followed, all the years after that.
And, at her wedding, she wore a pink
lady’s-slipper, and trails of purple fringed orchids
fell behind her wedding gown as she
strode down the aisle there, into the sun.
Ken Meisel is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow. His recent books are The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press: 2015), and Scrap Metal Mantra Poems (Main Street Rag: 2013). He has work in Rattle, Midwest Gothic, San Pedro River Review, Boxcar Review, Otis Nebula, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Pirene’s Fountain, among others.
Unspeakably beautiful.
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