Photo by BP

CHRYSANTHEMUMS

Now, the last chrysanthemums
Are poised on the edge of winter
In a clay pot on the windowsill.

What silent alarm told them
To bloom indoors, away from gardens
In the cool of autumn, the pale sun?

All year they burgeoned green, green.
Then the buds appeared in multitudes
Of lavender and gold – gifts for loss

Of summer – Altruists, how they gave
And gave, flower after flower,
Whether in the open air

In small squares on a city
Street, or in an airless room.
When I see their hot yellows

Circling meager trees along the curb.
I know again what I’ve always known
But seem to have forgotten:

Earth still hangs beneath
These sky-borne hives of stone.
How to thank them for their light

When days grow cold and darken early,
Th sun a blur of its molten self:
Mums who tach me all I need to know

Of blooming, early, or late,
In any earth at all.



DRY RUN

Lying in bed, holding my breath,
Arms crossed on my chest,
I imagine a tag on my big toe,
Jane Doe. I take inventory

Down the length of me. Goodbye
Legs veined like rivers on a map,
Fulcrum of my wheel – pudenda –
Sparsely fuzzed as a peach.

Goodbye breasts that once swung
Like lady apples when I bent
To lover’s work; aureoles pale,
Nipples silent as buzzers someone

Once pressed to let him in.
My eyes cannot see themselves,
But see the other. My head
Must be there on its thin stalk,

A reliquary of memories
Brittle as the finger bone
Of a saint; my voice offering old
Sorrows dark and sweet as fudge.

Dear one – myself – fear not.
This was only a game of death
To practice resurrection.
Now, rise!

-- Gertrude Morris

Gertrude Morris is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.