Flower in the Night [poem]
While walking through a forest dark, unbright
[for all this world is thick with rooted-in-one-place
and never-really-meet-the-other ownsome trees
abundantly enrobed in everdying leaves
which hinder our receiving of the light]
I found myself in newly rough-hewn paths
where shale is gemstones, jewels and wreaths
and there — to my surprise [yet not] —
I stumbled on a flower in the night.
Those naked petals fevered me with velvet feel
and smiled at me with candidness unreal
(for looking in my florafauna picture book
I saw no other flower there which had that look).
My beelike curiosity was freshly piqued
as, pollen-drenched and drunkenly
(my little wings were whirring constantly),
I couldn’t fly my body from her stamens’ reach
and any wrinkles from my former ragged life
persisting in their stupid grieving of me
somehow smoothed their furrows out
and somewhere in my buzzing mind
a knownful unknown voice exclaimed
with calm authority a final rhyme:
“This flower’s a peach!”
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 