Particles

Poetry | Roger Patulny

I see tears on lily stems

autumn trails 

ascending to blood and orange petals

from tubers past neckties through

the nectaries of hearts long shut to

middle age, lanceolate, wept out, wondering bewildered

stamen take to flight

preprandial fireflies

shaping a human firmament, yesterday, tonight

the impossible outline of youth

starrily performed, remembered now

the constellation of your smile and the comets and the

beetling about your crinkling eye

and I crack a whip that as they fade

amongst the thirsty throats of lilies 

our progeny of dewy weeds be free

and, red-eyed, hope that in decaying years to be  

a hopeful bud may grow in thee