Rosebuds for MildewPea

I don't understand why these roses have remained through the winter (it hasn't been much of a winter here) but today, I'm glad they did.

They're for my dear friend Mildred Diane Singleton who left us much too soon. Travel far, bright spark.



Antidote to the Fear of Death


Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Till they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometimes it's enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.


~ Rebecca Elson