Flowers for the Forgotten
after Mary Oliver
Each little bud was a geometry of grace.
Indigo Hyacinths, vagabonds of Spring.
Such little things.
What a journey through the long dark of Winter
at last pushing aside the dirt and fallen
leaves, to bloom, delicate loud.
Flowers are for the forgotten,
announcing resurrection. Tell me,
what does it taste like?
This body of her given
in little purple gifts reminding
the senses of what it means to be living.
Could it be that grief is light as a flower,
as easily plucked from the earth?
My garden remains unplanted, but
Hyacinths change the color of the water
I drink, the air that I breathe.
I am more careful where I plant my feet.
Wild Sunflowers on a Dirt Road
Wilderness was a riparian road leading home.
Yes, a road.
A man-made artifice, a scar,
deeper than the ones in my arm.
Wilderness was neither destination nor sycamore.
Wilderness was walking away from time & obligation,
to sit with the eternity of flowers & rivers.
What have I to offer coralline clouds but longing?
Rainstorms & rivers —
wilderness was the land of baptism & promise,
that all things would be green or golden,
sunflowers or ocean.
Wilderness was a sanctuary of egrets & herons.
From desecration, belonging.
Ninnescah is a word that flows
from the river of my mouth.
Though it was not made for my tongue,
I am made of its mud.
In a world of scars & artifacts,
what can we belong to?
The flowers belong to the sand, the shore,
the sediment,
while I am mostly erosion.
Animal body, corrosive carnivore.
Have I come to consume the sunflower
seed to feed only myopic me?
Remember reciprocity, scars & forgiven.
I am the road & the river,
the storm, & the flower.
The roots,
like roads,
how deep
do they go?
Follow the River
to find what is left of the wildlands
follow the dirt road that ends at the river
cross the iron tracks
do not look back
turn at the twisted Osage
around the Beaver-made lake
the Deer know the way
ignore the no trespassing warnings
read the otherside,
blissfully blank
silent Bobcat speaks in paw prints
mating Redtails cry welcome
those that have come before have painted
cathedrals of abandon
follow the river
beyond the rattle-clack of boxcar
gather some bones
sit in the sun
there are many paths to take
all of them will help you
lose your way
.
Poems by Aspen Everett
As a full-time parent first and a writer as often as life allows, Aspen Everett is haunted by the casualties of modernity. Creating what they call Heathen Mythology, Aspen hopes to return readers to reverence for the More-than-Human by creating myths of mutualism. Aspen is the author of Tributaries, available from Middle Creek Publishing, an instructor with Lighthouse Writers of Denver, and chair of Geopoetics with Beyond Academia Free Skool. They live in Boulder, Colorado with their sixteen-year-old, beneath the shadow of Mt. Arapaho.
