Regretting a Peony Field

Daniel Shanks

A hundred flowers will wake up
to sing their disposition with the negative spaces
between the seeds and white leaves.

The pain is like the complexity of a lady’s perfume
bittersweet, it smells dark but it looks like a rich
bouquet in an ancient scholar’s dream.

Again the pain is bright and profound, like a unique flower in the field, yet not betraying
the others. The dandelions are spots in my mind
each an illusion
where those bulbs become fiery and sting my eyes.

I try to make the best of this hangover,
but it hurts even more when my eyes open to sunshine in a bed of cold, blue sand.

 
 
 
previous.                                                                                               next.