The Dogwood

The blood and lapis daylight sets in ether. How the mind resets brutality of winter chill with February's codicil; what gossamer a dream begets. I hear the crickets in the dark, their clicking takes up where the lark has been. The flagrant marigolds have huddled into twilight's folds, on sanguine nightfall to embark. The eastern zephyrs fall and rise with rapid movement of my eyes and echo whispers midnight makes of blood white trails on moonlit lakes. In silhouette I recognize a dogwood, though can only sense its glowing coral consequence. The blossoms tell me they comprise sweet spawn of sun rays in disguise and capture all my heartbeats hence. Now honeysuckle is entwined on crisscrossed pathways of my mind with jasmine in a potpourri to conjure shamrock reverie that leaves the pewter scape behind. Around the lambent dogwood tree alone upon that verdant lea buds can prosper, bees will hum. As though seduced by opium I greet a vista I can't see, at least not quite. I know it's there and feel the dogwood everywhere, behind me, flanking left and right, an omnipresence in the night, like answers to unconscious prayer. Now high upon a clovered scarp the tree is standing clear and sharp. In silence I see restless blooms play music that my ear assumes is chiming dulcet as a harp. Such Efflorescent star bursts splay like windmills on a gusty day that in ebullience do portend a vibrance that will never end and all my reticence allay. In waking to a winter storm that's February's gelid norm I long still for my fulgid tree, resplendence that surrounded me, but only meet a turbid swarm. I rise and pull back hermit drapes to see the torrid flurries traipse, yet through the chaos can discern the leafless frame for which I yearn beyond the window storming scrapes. The dogwood stands just as before unclad upon the icy moor with nascent berries undeterred as though through humble verse and word like daylight through an unclosed door. 2/23/18 Strength Thru Adversity Gregory R. Barden