I WOULD BE

·

However, nothing is just what it seems to be.

My objects dream and wear new costumes,

compelled to, it seems, by  all the words in my  hands

and the sea that bangs in my throat.

The Room of My Life by Anne Sexton in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

I WOULD BE

by

Jamie Dedes

I would be that ancient red rosebush

sitting in meditation beside the creek

that flows near the home-place and

a belt of vacant land, wide-awake wood

·

I would be a thorn-and-thistle-free me,

a cool, soothing fog, a silken river-stone,

or a whiff of magnolia traveling through

dark night on an aquamarine breeze

·

An old hunger rises in me to rest calm

beside the safe harbor of rambling rill,

days writ in gently cautious calligraphy,

mind as empty and conscious as a forest

·

But rosebush and wood endure winter

and the creek its dry-spell, river-stone’s

silken finish is born of the chaffing wave,

the magnolia was felled by the gardener

·

Photo credit ~ Christine Vincent, Public Domain Pictures.net.

·