Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Anne's Furies






                                        


                                       Inspired by the poem "From the Garden" by Anne Sexton








Your furies planted thorns,
ground petals into madder,
dyeing the earth, murdering the soil, 
casting aspersions until it was no longer fallow, 
only barren and dull.

The staccato sounds of seeds dropped
from your tenuous, tremulous height
fell into the ground with numb exuberance,  
tiny bombs exploding into nothingness
before they could ever begin to bloom.

Your eyes saw two separate worlds — 
one light and one dark —
and still, you could not combine them
into a substitute for Life, an acceptable compromise, 
if only in a peripheral sense.

Why did you allow them to put blinders over your lowered head, 
balanced slightly upon your ears, fastened so neatly into place, 
gray placards designed to block the view of everything 
except for muddy tracks you galloped on, breathless, 
their considerable bets stacked up against you?

Far away from those too-shallow graves,
I shall plant flowers for you, instead - 
not lilies, not orchids, not roses, no ...

I will scatter strange seeds in a vicious circle, 
vibrant wildflowers for one who could never be tamed.













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