The blushed syllable it wore with its whole body,tawny rose-hip orbof antique origin,
Now it is night again, child on my chest.I croon & my song drifts you toward rest.
This is not my making any ecstatic,
sleep-deprived screed
“Think,” Aretha Franklin and Ted White, Aretha Now, Atlantic, 1968
How a fuchsia blouse becomesbougainvillea, ora pair of greyhounds staggersinto abstraction, zigzag
Primitive angiosperm, genus prior even to bees,
When the fledgling fell from its nest, by meager attempt,by pinwheel descent,and lay, unguarded,
Famously late, light reaches useons past its own extinction,
Sometimes I wander around wonderingwhere my mother is. The family buriedher next to her own mother. Out there,the hard pines darken early. Anyonecan hide and not be found for years.Bobby Cherry laid low there. The girls camein his dreams...