sunflower

It’s been a month of weeping and fear.

(Don’t worry, friends, he’s not dying this week.

Death has been reminding us it will arrive

sooner or later, that’s all.) And I am making

a bargain, betting that if I feel all of it now,

the pain won’t settle in my body and spew out

later, sideways, against the people I love.

Funny that this is the dress I have to show for this

impossible time, now crossed, completed, so

it must have been possible after all?

In the nights I wake and wonder how I will go on.

In the studio, days, I thought I was doing well to

put fabric on the table, print anything at all, go through

the motions of normal. But look, the sunflower

that was in my garden is now on my sleeve.

How did something this bright come through me

in this dark time? Life insists on itself. Later today

we will buy groceries and argue over the right

kind of salt. Energy field full of buzzy bees.

So here we are, angry, defeated, still alive.