A moment
If I could ask for one thing
It would be a moment
To go back to a brief moment
A time where it was simple
Not a thought
Only a feeling
Not a consequence
Only the present

I wish I could go back
And stay there.

I tell my secrets to children
in the form of fairy tales
A "Once upon a time," is enough
to quiet down their wails
and I spin stories as well as spiders
weaving webs that a lost child
must navigate the tangled trails
with cleverness and wit
sharper than any sword
more accurate than any arrow
I speak of children who questioned
the established path of rejection
and this misguided idea of reciprocity,
"You must suffer because it happened to me."
Because my blessing in life was not brute strength
but a clear mind and clever tongue.
I tell my secrets to children
so that they may grow smarter because of them.

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air—The edge
cuts without cutting
meets—nothing—renews
itself in metal or porcelain—

whither? It ends—

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry—

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica—
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses—

The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end—of roses

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness—fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal’s
edge and the

From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact—lifting
from it—neither hanging
nor pushing—

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space