Meadowsweet

"You should know

that when you swagger among us

I hear two voices speaking,

one your spirit, one

the acts of your hands." -Louise Gluck

Cream in the damp meadow,

our heads unruly but shine

like china plates after washing

I see you walk with absent purpose;

your large thunder-calves crush

our sweetness out.

Will you flatten me before

you pull my long curve

from the darkness of below?

Or will you detach me first,

smell me intact, maybe even

offer me a glass of water

to float in, unhinged,

until you lose interest

and leave me to dry?

Possession leads you, seeds

your mind with an awful desire.

To want, to own, to grasp, to pull.

You will rip me, but I will

have an afterlife.

Mark this: the earth is beclouded

in the confusion of taken children,

the missing, the torn,

the growing procession of the gone

who were lead away from sodden meadows.

Like them, I will haunt in shadowed spaces.

Like them, I will remind you:

If you breathe my scent too deep,

I will enter your dark tunnels

where I'll uncurl and sow inside you.