While Night Still Keeps Us
       

Finally, if we're very lucky, we get to see affection
for what it's always been, most likely: love's truest
season. The stars receive unto themselves again
the rogue star that sex, believing itself to be king,
for a time really was, and gift it with the steadier,
more reliable crown of context. Words like rescue

and tenderness and forever and don't go, flightless
now, swim in circles the lake of drama they only
used to appreciate for what they could see in it
of their own reflections. Too late, of course,
they know better now. They can see the shore,
but cannot reach it. They can see the cattails
that grow thick there, blown to seed, as happens,

yes, necessarily, and just beyond the cattails, rioting
as usual in banks of color, the flowering shrub
called oleander, each part of it poisonous, but most
especially the smoke that, like an unexpected
second bloom, the plant indifferently
releases, when set on fire.

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Copyright © 2020 Carl Phillips All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission