For the Mercy of Forgetting

 

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with scarlet red

and wear it as a binding scarf

sewn from every word I said.

If it were time for me to sleep

like a stone the river runs above

I would count the clouds from underneath

an accountant in the house of love.

If it were time for me to speak

with roses growing from my teeth

I'd talk of roots and bark and limbs

and dress my skin in paraffins. 

If it were time for me to pay

Charon for my journey home

I'd fill my purse with copper coins

and jelly made from angel bones.

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with climbing vines

and lay my head where heads can rest

with hyacinths and columbines.

__________

image: black barlow columbine

The Intermediary

I've left tea on the outside table

a baffle for whatever wanders the woods.

Lance-shaped willow leaves fall 

and alter the prescription, the drowse

of the day and the mind with confusing pall.

What lured these leaves from their mother-branch

to my poor care in the orphaned hour?

What strange embroidery can quicken them again

into their summer suits of pride and motion?

Autumn's alchemist brings gold, then lead.

Here is the potion, the breviary, the wine

fermented from pomegranates, swayed by tannins.

My faith is in teriac and the reading of leaves

in my baked clay mug and the struggling lungs

of my patients un-greening like harvested sheaves.

_________

for Sunday Muse #182.