I found the leaf that ate the sun
on the back of my hand, golden and varicose
like a waitress’s shins unhidden by
her thick smudge of peach stockings
and the shoes that murmur hush hush,
your food is ready soon, and she makes
enough money today to send her daughter
to school in stiff new jeans. I remember
his hand held up, an agrafe to hold fizzing
words inside the bottle of my mouth. I lay
the leaf there, close my lips around it
and whistle the whistle of grass.
Of course I like all your poems, Julie, but this one worked better for me than the sestina thingy. This one’s almost alive, wriggling as I read it!
Rik, you aren’t the only one who prefers this to the sestina! Thanks for stopping by.
I love this. Such a rich overall picture, alluding, it seems, to passing. All flesh is grass? I’m responding to the musicality of those wonderful images and a sense, maybe, of philosophical regret.
Glad you’re writing poems again.
By the way, as sestinas go, that one was pretty good. I read all the way to the end. I hardly ever do that on those things.