by Mary Ann Larkin

February Snow

Lying awake
thinking about love.
If anyone ever loves anyone
if it’s not all for comfort
or sex or something,
something other than love,
not shining and simple
like rain is simple
and snow,

yes, February snow
in end-of-day lavender light
with the tips of purple crocuses
pushing through
some of them waving—
like wild creatures—
last year’s ragged leaves.

***

Blue Flame

I see you under your eaves
surrounded by the things you love,
your white wicker
the rugs from Persia.
Is the peacock feather there
and the geraniums,
the blue bottles the sun plays with,
the pictures of the ancestors
and you as a little girl
looking with wide eyes
into the lens your father held?

I hope you brought everything with you
along with the canvases
of the women you’ve loved,
capturing their lighted curves
with your hand, your eyes.
I always wanted to draw you
when you were drawing me.
You are what you are then,
honed down
sea-washed.
Passing through you,
light becomes line becomes color.

And when you can no longer speak
with charcoal or paint
when your vision becomes too heavy
with all the under layers,
you take your pen
and write down what you see,
how everything is connected.We never finished
our painting to ourselves.
It was to have had a border of red geraniums
but it had a mind of its own.
I lay still
letting you and the light define me.

When we put the painting away
there was a soreness in our hearts.
“You will come back,” you said.
“In the spring,” I promised.
In your yard, wet leaves
were falling in piles.

We did not know
when we began
this painting of ourselves
where it would lead us.
Light turned our fingertips pink
teasing us to follow, claimed us
as it does the blue bottles you turn
to catch the sun.

***

Our Town

Let the garage moan once more
jacked and tilted, swaying
above the garden
as peach lilies
passed over by the sun
fold their wanton throats

and let the red-headed children
trundle by once more at their mother’s call,
mossy secrets hidden
in the blue wheelbarrow
under the once-snowy skin
of the lamb

and let the carpenter with the gold tooth
slide once more
past the open-eyed window
of the widow Irene
up her back stairs
to where the widow pines

and in the almost dawn
let the thunder sound,
let it rouse the carpenter
once more from the widow’s bed
to tether
the garage to earth

and in the dawn’s rain
let the gardener
come once more into his garden
muttering incantations
all things hidden, opened, made fast.

Image by Valeria Boltneva via Pexels