Valediction Lessons: Flora
       

Bromeliads hold their water close for later.
  And have I ever been held close for later?
    Here is the fossa where you store, what, a
      tangle of sounds? And see the insects throwing
        their bodies against our bodies? Hear the wind-
          pipe's rattle, seagrass, and a humming wound?
            The star-pit is a far-flung lamentation reflected
              back by the sea. The sand dollar is an extremely
                flattened, burrowing sea urchin. Though I am
                  a bonfire I am not so bent on visiting the
                    Laconicum. The sun through the leaves prints
                      patterns of skeletons on the soil. I never said
                        I wanted to be retooled and left trusting in a cold
                          desert. And there are still knees to kiss, a logician's
                            euphoric music to dreamproof. A celebration
                              of the impossibility of eyelashes, of having an exit
                                from the flesh? Here is an extremely flattened place
                                  for people to go who cannot clean the salt stains
                                    from their feet. And tears are not liquefied brain
                                      but maybe they could preserve a creature or
                                        be made into a nice necklace. The pinecone feels
                                          inevitable in the hand, but who has breath left
                                            to spend on little things like walking away

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Copyright © 2013 Corey Van Landingham All rights reserved
from Hayden's Ferry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission