You Take For Granted

86 the minnesota review Lyn Lifshin You Take For Granted the dripping lilacs the blue petals battered, holding on holding their brightness in hot steamy air as if to become brighter once hail melts from the slick dark stems. A postcard wouldn't do it. How much should I try to tell you. If there was a photograph I'd be the blonde in the black velvet fitted suit. It would be Cape Anne in November. The lilacs would have flamed and pulled away, a summer romance now short as the weeks. The woman, let's think of her as a spy, guerrilla, stealing in where no one could go, camouflaged as some poet, man crazed, a little flakey who visits rooms she cant stay in, undresses and lies down with lifshin 87 danger, cocky enough to suppose she could lose her skin or her balance, still be ok. The blue of lilacs, veins thru flesh cashmere, roadmaps to places where there are roadblocks, blue of the gas, the blue tattoos. Even if I was alive the numbers would have been worn from Where I pulled from what tied me. You take the lilacs for granted the blue leaves in the bottom of Dresden china, cyanide glowing with a blue light that zaps like no lover ...