“beautiful things fill every vacancy”

                                  for C. D. Wright

         filaments of her gift
persistent mysteries
     palpable consciousness
a world of naming
    of ablutions in time
        fighter instinct
action, the pressing in,
        closing in
            heart thrums
for a powerful image
       dazzling light:
redemption!
       to reassess language, 
its tactility
   emotion, lyric, oblique 
irony twists, shifts by
   pulse & ear, resilient
her consummate body poetics
    echo into night
it hits us what is now absent
    from every bouquet
cut like flowers before their time

Copyright © 2016 Anne Waldman. Used with permission of the author.