Allison May Kiphuth, Scrub Jays, 2016
Watercolor, ink, paper and pins in antique box
3.5"h x 4.5"w x 1.75"d
Night, you’ve textured me with sadness.
I don’t know what to do
with this unfamiliar shade,
this head full of sagging flowers.
The garden’s a deep theater,
its darkness a garland
woven with moving.
Some bouquets frighten me.
In their heads, I imagine, fangs wait.
It’s not in your nature
to be sinister, sister,
but you’d strangle the world if it felt right.
You’d substitute the venom for the cure.
How to distinguish hysteria
from wisteria, aftermath from ruin?
There’s no way to separate
this evening from its dusk.
I will not play the fool.
I will not coax the wax from the bee.
Take me to the morning
that outlasts all other mornings,
that opens on acres of yellow
with no thick petals to speak of;
take me to the dawn that drives the sun
to drag its mirror across the lake
where seeing will no longer be new.