Reba

I remember pouring imagination into you When as a child you sat awed for my stories Today I read poems your heart brings to view And hear the honesty only a child knows. Woman, mother, wife ... the child has grown Larva, chrysallis, moth ... the myth has flown. You tell truth straight like arrow to the heart I feel your words bleeding through my vein Without crafty turns and dissimulations. Sharp Knife cutting away compromise and conceit. I know you where your feelings rise, smokeless With panting predicates, painting plain pictures I could not write, for you are much more fearless. You drank mandro-bitta tea and licked your lips, You stained desire with honey and fed drifters, Your thoughts whisper to the edge of the sea Licking the face of memory with pink evenings. Do you not know white herons are not a cross? That I love my hibiscus alone going red to gold? You tell truth, because you see and look again While I turn away to dream the deeper thing. When the withered world is done we have you The last loveliness, the dream unwithering, Your imagination shimmering like a windy sea. The last hibiscus on the stem belongs to me.