David Teng Olsen, Mural, 2017
 

At sunset, this October,
            I picked some Nippon daisies, 
the last flower to flower,
            a verb named for its noun.
 
The weather was all indoors.
            A Page solo plus Michelangelo 
enameled in cerulean, tangles
            of what looked like instant ramen,
 
a heavy barge in the surf offshore,
            a spindly zeppelin down, the scene 
split by an architectural birch
            crisscrossed by laser blasts.
 
Dave added the sky one day,
            then blew our heads apart
by denying it had ever been a sky.
            A spider creature was our sons.
 
Their hair entangled meant
            they would now never be apart,
not their whole lives wandering
            in a world itself worryingly
 
wandering who knows where.
            Look, there’s a friendly bloom; 
Look, a vivisectionist, a severed wrist. 
            These thoughts our house had had about us.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! ev’n as the flow’rs in Spring,
    	To which, besides their own demean
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
                	   Grief melts away
         	           Like snow in May,
    	As if there were no such cold thing.
 
    	Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
    	Quite under ground; as flow’rs depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                	Where they together
                	All the hard weather,
    	Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
 
    	These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to Hell
    	And up to Heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
                	We say amisse
                	This or that is;
    	Thy word is all, if we could spell.
 
    	O that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither;
 	   Many a Spring I shoot up fair,
Offring at Heav’n, growing and groning thither,
                	Nor doth my flower
                	Want a Spring-showre,
    	My sinnes and I joyning together.
 
    	But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if Heav’n were mine own,
    	Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
                	Where all things burn,
                	When Thou dost turn,
    	And the least frown of Thine is shown?
 
    	And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
    	I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O, my onely Light,
                	It cannot be
                	That I am he
    	On whom Thy tempests fell all night.
 
    	These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flow’rs that glide;
    	Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
                	Who would be more,
               	Swelling through store,
    	Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.