Anticipating "The Artifice of Blue Light"

Anticipating "The Artifice of Blue Light"

lupine seeds for a book

mark i leave off just as

they are leaving off

and by all intents

and purposes it will be

for the long time 

that forever is and never

become, as those two

folks go to bed together

and make children, 

children that come up

from the bare desert 

of the womb that's sung

the blues all these years

running.  ironic, if you

want, or some might

say it's just

coincidence, having 

a packet of seeds handy

to make of them a staying

place for the vernacular.  maybe this is

the only season I've got

left to get them into

their reward,

plunge them back 

into their caul

of dark and predict

a miracle will arrive by

way of my front gate.  at home

the lupines

make their own wild way

and they jut their peppery stuff

up from the salt and smoke

and take to the land

the way only the scattered

and finally planted have to

if they want

a say in anything about them,

how they are seen and leaned

into, how they pluck

or brush by elbows &

chests, and feel

the sweet hurt 

at the mercy of something other

than their fingertips un

-zipping their husks finally

to come undone: by birds

by curious kids, by

meticulous women skinning

them for their pent-up pink

or white or lavender sal-

utations at being and continuing

with being a being.

*title of a catalogue collection 

of henriette wyeth's still lifes.