Delphiniums in a Window Box by Dean Young (1955-2022)
Every sunrise, sometimes strangers’ eyes. Not necessarily swans, even crows, even the evening fusillade of bats. That place where the creek goes underground, how many weeks before I see you again? Stacks of books, every page, character’s rage and poet’s strange contraption of syntax and song, every song even when there isn’t one. Every thistle, splinter, butterfly over the drainage ditches. Every stray. Did you see the meteor shower? Every question, conversation even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud, because of you I’m talking to crickets, clouds, confiding in a cat. Everyone says Come to your senses, and I do, of you. Every touch electric, every taste you, every smell, even burning sugar, every cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples at the farmer’s market, every melon, plum, I come undone, undone.
