Tendril

It is the Past’s supreme italic
makes the Present mean—

~ Emily Dickinson, “Glass was the Street— in Tinsel Peril” (#1518)

My cities and estates are made of smoke
and poems, my résumé laced with ample
culs-de-sac. You must have known

I could not trade my mountains
for plains so desolate in the heat.
I longed for the absolving rain, erasure

of missteps: poor choices, my rush
to cash the currency before its prime.
But now the sight of any small

tenderness moves more than grief
that runs its salt into the soil:
a flower smaller than my finger-

nail bursts white upon the sill
then shrivels; and yet it gifts
its fragrance like a signature.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.