Gift-Distant, Scratched
       

Maybe a pool filled with roses someone
uprooted before they bloomed fully.
And I stood before them the way an animal
accepts sun, the way an animal never
thinks hunger will stop.

It does stop. That's the best
I can say. You're given a life.
Each all every
small part can't be good, can't be
the worst of it.

For instance, I couldn't know why
such a terrible thing, roses wrenched out of earth like that.
They were floating.

But an animal—
to take in color like taste, flung petals drifting brilliant quick
savored, any human thought
somewhere distant, a scratched record,
the old turntable in the house
over and over, going bad.

Comes wonder in that sound.
Slip into a door
to lift the needle. Or full-faced as daylight,

stay in the yard.

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Copyright © 2016 Marianne Boruch All rights reserved
from Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission