Red Crop Milk

Red crop milk of the greater flamingo makes the blue sky blush
each dusk. At last, love has woven itself into my life like a rumor. It bleeds 
 
into every dream and atmosphere, every bite, so even the hot white 
cream of rice I eat while reading our synastry before I sleep turns
 
rose. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo carries carotenoids
to the magenta neck of a pink gladiolus bloom, one of twelve that burst
 
from a single spike, each with its trio of anthers dancing atop the ovary
just like the joyous ladies on the Three of Cups whose chalices tilt
 
to spill red crop milk of the greater flamingo. Gladioli transubstantiate
the water in my bedside vase from clear to crimson, while your Moon 
 
touches my Venus and my Mars dwells in your eighth house, so our home
would be a haven and the rest is too carnal to tell without blushing
 
fuchsia. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo infuses every form of life 
with that delicate animal tenderness—you know, the way a heart beats
 
inside a creature feathered or furred, or beneath grasses in the wind, deep 
under the pelt of the Earth, or under my skin as I lie here thinking of you,
 
blue. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo pulses through the puddle
of porridge my brain has become because when I fall in love, love bleeds
 
into everything. Just imagine how it must be for the maker, the mind 
behind creation who weaves it all together in an expansive act of love, who
 
makes red crop milk of the greater flamingo, who sees the florist’s neon
sign in space and decides to send sumptuous bouquets of magenta-necked
 
gladioli stems to a few particular stars. The consequent outburst of stellar
delight is explosive, and that’s how Earth is born. Earth’s umbilical cord
 
contains red crop milk of the greater flamingo. Imagine what it’s like to be
the one who wove and weaves and weaves, whose love and longing to be 
 
loved bleeds through every seen and unseen strand of life: the lonely inability,
because you’re God, to write in ink I must go to bed O go with me go with

me. Red crop milk of the greater flamingo tints three gray-downed chicks 
light pink. At night it drips slowly from my pineal gland into the diocese

of my brain that’s obsessed and blue because I can’t write go with me 
to one who’s already tugged a garter from the thigh of his bride. At night it 
 
drips: red crop milk of the greater flamingo drips, converts an earthly feeling
into a thing divine, transforms my blue to violet, purest violet of the seventh 
 
ray, meaning even if I can’t have you, I can love you
anyway. And I can love the lonely one who wove you, anyway.