Figured Dark: Poems

Lilacs for Instance

Lilacs for Instance What is the purpose of green or of blue? —Rainer Maria Rilke How I believe a time comes when they will not bloom again and later find it isn’t true. Thus, the house down the road–– overgrown with flowering lilacs. At night I walk a path behind it coming up along the creek. Framed in a second-story window, a woman stands in a green kimono, toweling herself after a bath. The silk of her robe falls back to expose the areola of one breast and the shadow of her sex, lush as the flowers that encircle the house, her bedroom window lit like a painting from Bonnard. I pause in the looming dark, tongue thick with the fragrance of lilacs, until she turns out her light. After which there are always lilacs, and the sweet music of a distant song. 56 ...