Dancing dandelions
and buttercups in the grass
remind me of other summer
flowers, simple blossoms
roses and tiger lilies by the wall
milk pod, sumac branches
lilacs across the road, daisies, blueberries
snaps, cut violets
three years ago still grow in my mind
as peonies or planted geraniums, bachelor buttons
in downy fields filled with clover
lover, come again and again up fern
path upheld as memory’s perennial
against stern hard-faced officers of imprisonment
and cold regulation more painful than lover’s arms
or flowers charming but not more lasting.
No, the wild tulip shall outlast the prison wall
no matter what grows within.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.