Red

Such a red is extreme in these precincts,
an enlargement of memory. And here are six roses
large as hearts outside Bennigan's,
a hint of traffic light in esoteric ivy, centripidal and fixed
with helical filaments.
The society of clouds-as-thoughts is larger than the town,
turning rose against carmine
like initials in an insular manuscript: the first page of St. Matthew
in the book of Kells,
Chi Rho with its curlicues of hair, each thought tried smaller.
It was often said so and so
lost their sight over such details, in scrutiny of text
or embroidery of flowers.

How small my heart, that it should be so colorful and last
so long against the universe.
Its beats coming in hundreds like bats from the cave in Texas
answering the untoward:
sudden shear winds written of, the qualities of genius
where a mind flies forward
and a body lags behind. The nothing but come undone from its author.
The place on a nerve where trees assemble
to be replenished since the hillside is gone into decks and cabinets.
Where vista is a memory of roses
Whose heads are arborized clouds and roots are red-eyed as forgiveness.

Copyright © 2008 Allan Peterson All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission