Petal to Dust
The sky is the color of a bruised machine,
A heavy, lidless eye of ashen stone.
It has been forty years since hills were green,
Or since the rain washed the graphite soot alone.
We live in the ribs of cities, hollowed out,
Sifting the silt for a shimmer of glass or tin,
In a world that forgot what a seed was all about,
Where the earth is a drum, stretched tight and thin.
I climbed the ridge where the concrete spine
Of the old interstate snaps and meets the sky.
I was looking for copper, or a rusted sign,
Anything the scavengers had passed by.
But there, in a crack where the asphalt bled,
In a pocket of dirt that the wind had missed,
A defiance of color, a startling red,
A throat of velvet that the sun had kissed.
I fell to my knees, and the world went still—
The groan of the turbines, the whistle of thirst—
Everything vanished from the brow of the hill,
Except for this miracle, blessed and cursed.
It was a small thing, no larger than a coin,
With a stem like a needle, translucent and frail,
A splash of soft blood on a landscape of shale.
I reached out a finger, then pulled it back fast,
Terrified my shadow would wither the bloom.
How had it lingered? How was it the last?
A solitary candle in a planet-sized room.
Did it dream of the meadows? Of the heavy-set bees?
Or was it a stranger to the ghosts of the trees,
An isolated, beautiful, purposeless thing?
I looked to the horizon
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a
Premium Membership.
