A flower’s script, its voice once needing
a god called water, imprints itself
excruciatingly slowly into stone.
And forty-five million years later
two strangers enter a cemetery
to plant ferns and geraniums.
Over the grounds’ faucet they talk.
Mud splatters under the faucet’s stream.
They wash their nails, their hands,
kneading the bones, pressing
the palms into the caves they are.
Hers, veined, his, young,
a tanned hand and a pale smother
with flowers the god of grief, noted
for excess and slow movement into stone.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 3.
Sharon Chmielarz’s latest books of poetry are Love from the Yellowstone Trail (2013), Calling, a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, 2011, and The Sky Is Great the Sky Is Blue. She’s the recipient of the 2012 Jane Kenyon Award from Water~Stone Review.
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