The Flower

Monday night, the tv on,

keeping us tied to the hundrum:

you watching and I, lamely, pretending

to read.  Then you were bending

your mouth to mine and mine

was answering, and time

stilled, and out of the heart

came a song of our first

spring; an ache and burn.

How sweet and clean was that return.

How can we not believe in some

beneficent source of grace, if from

the dull hearts habit made can grow

this flower—momentary and no—

way ever to be preserved or pressed?

And so the big words, dispossessed

by our ramshackle fumbling

with phonemes, come tumbling

back across the page:

Love, Time, Ever, Age.