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Cynthia Arafa
There's a truth in a
painted picture of grass,
as it's sways aside to reveal
secrets. In poppies that
grow bittersweet red and black,
that drank the sorrow and tried
to forget. To dancing fields
that grow from years
of crushed, decaying, pitiful lives,
to form those magnifiscent
oceans of cerulean upon gold.
Truths that cascade over storms,
rushes to help those caught in the
betraying winds and cold.
There's a glistening truth in
all sadness
I am monogramming
Seven dozen napkins,
With tablecloths to match,
For a bride.
Ninety-one times my needle shall trace
The leaf-like scrolls that interlace
Each other; up the padded side
Of the monogram my eye shall guide
For ninety-one days where the stitches run ;
And every day one more is done.
She is tall and fair,
She will be married
In June. ...
The linen is fine as satin is fine;
Its shining coolness flaunts design
Of death-white poppies, trailing ferns
With but one life full certified,
And that of every gleam denied
My portion,
Close to the unrelenting sod.
E'en as my fathers dumbly trod,
I've slumbered;
But now a surging, wild unrest
Uproots the poppies from my breast,
My soul awake, erect! anew!
I stand and face the star-swept blue,
And swear to make my dreams come true!
You shadow and flame,
You interchange,
You death in the game!
Now I gather you up,
Now I put you back
Like a poppy in its cup.
And so, you are a maid
Again, my darling, but new,
Unafraid.
My love, my blossom, a child
Almost! The flower in the bud
Again, undefiled.
And yet, a woman, knowing
All, good, evil, both
In one blossom blowing.
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
In a loose white gown she walks and a new child tugs at cords in her body.
Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,
A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
From out the dragging vastness of the sea,
Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands,
He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands
One moment, white and dripping, silently,
Cut like a cameo in lazuli,
Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands
Prone in the jeering water, and his hands
Clutch for support where no support can be.
So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,
He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow
And sandflies dance their little lives away.
The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch
The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,
And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.