The bloom shows edges of brown,
Early Summer's sign of fertility,
Beautiful as those half dozen gray
hairs
Speaking the early maturity
Of the pregnant twenty-five year
old
Whose girl, at six,
Likes wildflowers
And whose son of four
Is barely
restrained
From indiscriminate
picking.
"We live in an old time,
A declining time," I tell her.
"The lies of civilization
Are catching up with us."
"I know," she smiles back,
"But us," pointing at the girl
Distressed at the dying flower,
"We'll survive."
Laughing explanation of the course
of flowers,
The growth of seeds,
To a child who knows already
The secrets of her mother's womb.
Laughing, in her fertile notion
Of incomprehensible hope.
1983
appeared in the San Fernando Poetry Journal, vol. 6, no. 4, 1984
