Frank Steele

You’re expected to see only the top, where sky scrambles bloom, and not the spindly leg, hairy, fending off tall, green darkness beneath. Like every flower, she has a little theory, and what she thinks is up.   I imagine the long climb out of the dark beyond morning glories, day lilies, four o’clocks up there to the dream she keeps lifting, where it’s noon all day.

I take pillows outdoors to sun them as my mother did.  “Keeps bedding fresh,” she said.  It was April then, too— buttercups fluffing their frail sails, one striped bee humming grudges, a crinkle of jonquils.  Weeds reclaimed bare ground. All of these leaked somehow into the pillows, looking odd where they simmered all day, the size of hams, out of place on grass.  And at night I could feel some part of my mother still with me in the warmth of my face as I dreamed baseball and honeysuckle, sleeping on sunlight.