Last year’s hydrangeas, see how




Last year’s hydrangeas, see how

 

            they sit yet with their full heads

             and measure themselves against

            these February melancholies

            together with their self-

            preservations to absorb nothing

            of winter and its required

 

            privations. See how they still

cling to their own twig

and branch and root,

            their moss and sod, how they rely

            on the falling away

            fence for some of their staid

straying.  I am glad of them

in winter, and I want to

            like them more this way,

 

            with their elderly hair

            stuck to the twig, their head

            dressed by the busy beauticians

            of before and during and after

blizzard with their washes

and rinses and sets, with their

tonics and talcs and trusses

            to keep it all

 

            up within this to the end,

the closure of the lasting last

            of the last of last season. 

            I talk with them through

            the window while I watch

            the sun being thrust

            up from under the bell

            skirt of the easy

mountain, done with her

valley for the night.

 

I wonder if they believe

and lean into that dated

story, how their suffering is without

question gaining them

merit, or do they pull back

from that old lie now

that they’re bound

and ravished in ways

only the old can be

ravished: their loose

almost boneless hips,

the muscleless couch

of their slouch, sunk

daily under and under

and under by the leviathans

of their flesh.

 

            But what’s lost is what’s

increased, right, the blush

of the new rust

            the dust on the thinning skin

            just millimeters to the femurs

            and ribs, that beneath,

like the roots who

            renew in their self

            preserving beneath the snow,

            stave the cold by holding

            and holding and holding

on through.


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