For Amy Lowell

We walked through garden closes
Languidly, with dragging Sunday feet,
And passed down a long pleached alley,
And could remember, as one remembers in a fairy tale,
Ladies in brocade, and lovers, and musk.
We surprised tall dahlias
That shrugged and turned scarlet faces to the breeze.

Further still we sauntered under old trees that bended with such a dignity
But hardly acknowledged our passing
Until at last—(and it was like a gift,
A treasure lifted from a dream of the past)
We came to a pond banded in lindens.

The bank curved under its crown of forget-me-nots;
They shone like blue jewels from the further shore.
And they were free! I could have had them all
To gather and to carry in my arms!
But I took only a few,
Seven blue gems,
To set in the gold of my memory. 

When they finished burying me, what was left of me
sent up a demand like a hand blooming in the fresh dirt:

When I’m back, I want a body like a slash of lightning.
If they heard me, I couldn’t hear their answers.

But silence has never stopped me from praying.
Alive, how many nights did I spend knelt between

the knees of gods and men begging for rain, rent,
and reasons to remain? A body like the sky seeking

justice. A body like light reaching right down into the field
where you thought you could hide from me.

They’ve taken their bald rose stems and black umbrellas
home now. They’ve cooked for one another, sung hymns

as if they didn’t prefer jazz. I’m just a memory now.
But history has never stopped me from praying.

is what my sons call the flowers—
purple, white, electric blue—
 
pom-pomming bushes all along
the beach town streets.
 
I can’t correct them into
hydrangeas, or I won’t.
 
Bees ricochet in and out
of the clustered petals,
 
and my sons panic and dash
and I tell them about good
 
insects, pollination, but the truth is
I want their fear-box full of bees.
 
This morning the radio
said tender age shelters.
 
This morning the glaciers
are retreating. How long now
 
until the space-print backpack
becomes district-policy clear?
 
We’re almost to the beach,
and High dangerous! my sons
 
yell again, their joy in having
spotted something beautiful,
 
and called it what it is.