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Phlox
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Phlox The funnel dropped my tree house, a perfect imitation of my family’s white saltbox, on the carport. Mother stepping on the dollhouse: an accident, the sitting room slicing her heel to the bone. Blood on the baby wallpaper, maple armoire in her toes. I thought to trim the cowslip from shingles, invite the splinters with a watch word, curl on the pitch and ruptured pine. My tree, I set to sweeping, slept outside amid the cicely. I was listening for the odd wild, how elephants escape before earthquakes, white snakes stream out of the ground. I would learn that kind of warn. If you do not mind I climbed into the wreckage. If you do not mind I set the stump for dolls and tea. I was a child; I thought the acorn steeping in the china -61- was an acorn, and no fence rattle, train moan, butterfly blown backward in wind-spur would warn me otherwise. Nor a cloud like a chiffon sleeve.Wait for me. Let me learn to read the leaves, hold the water under tongue and sift the future. I was born inside your flower. If the earth says to move, let me swim to you through miles. -62- ...