White Petals, 3 a.m.
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- White Petals, 3 a.m.
Lights out but it's glowing—the dogwood's white-petaled cloud that fillsthe window above the window seatjust feet from the foot of my bed.
And I'm thinking I've seen this,the same wide-eyed whiteness, winter nightswhen the naked branches were gloved in snowthat had stored the day's light somehow.
Now it's the moon(an assumed one, out of the window's frame)spilling light on the constellationsof blossoms, beamed through the room
to interrogate me: should people sleepin April? The flowering out therecould be my lit-up circuitry,my brain reflecting
on bounty. This. The moon of consciousfullness. The brimming thing that wanes.The tree with every fragilepetal on before the first [End Page 187]
one falls, the sun comes up, the greenleaves take over the length of summer,so long you forget you live in time.Don't blink. Don't. Not again. [End Page 188]
Mary Jo Salter is the author of eight books of poems, most recently The Surveyors (2017). She is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
