The White Flower

Bruce Meyer
From:   The Open Room. Black Moss Press, 1989, p 18

For Gwendolyn MacEwen, in memory

Leading the life of an island when ships pass by
I walked alone tonight in the afterglow
and imagined shores without a single footprint,

the inner labyrinth of green life a lexicon,
and every clear stream a perfect memory.
I called to you in the twilight once --

the shadows buzzed with cicadas.
You held a white flower in your fingertips,
its petals draping your articulate hand,

waiting to be pressed like a poem among pages,
set to memory as if a round summer moon.
Season after season I clutch the brittle remains

of old earthís crumbling catalogue,
tighten my knuckles to white and nothing I can say
can restore the light a withered rose

or the moon high in a humid August sky
unless someone in the silence of a winter night
needs and is needed to announce the first star.

Starlight, starbright, I knew a woman who sang
of the plucked moon blooming on a summer night.
She gave me the white flower in her hand.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Bruce Meyer's works copyright © to the author.