Love Note
ce petit message gIissé sur l'oreiller

This little message slipped under the ear's
soft province, to which cheek, crown,
every aspect of the human head inclines,

sails its lispy ballet of secret
under the busy village of the inner
ear, where a child is about to tune

a bright violin to the consummate ting
of a fork. Regrettably, it's only idiom
upon idiom, a pirouette of phrase quaint

only to the unFrench; nevertheless, apple
and rose, part sustenance, part charm.
Once having caught it is commotion enough

to unspool all manner of extravagance,
like the amaryllis we coddle in its tin tub
all winter, the flaking, loamy knob

already trying its translucent spikes,
one of which may unfurl into a parasol so heavy
it must be staked over the sad bananas—

while the child and I recount the marvel
of the stalk's waxy progress, not the bloom,
but the story of the bloom, which is so

inexorably orange finally, we forget
what we were expecting all the long
green going, now that the light has left

the single window that poured sun
on the shortest day of the year,
its whole reason for being there at all.

Copyright © 2010 Leslie Adrienne Miller All rights reserved
from Ninth Letter
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission