I watched the bouquet that you bought me
bloom inside my house.
I watched the swollen buds, not
quite green and not quite pink,
fluttering with life inside their
walls, slowly pushing to
release them from their
chambers to the great unknown of
my living room: this is about you,
you know.

I watched the leaves that you brought me
slowly make a change
quietly and faithfully
diligently, canopies
beneath flowers,
(leaves are so
  overlooked)

and I also watched the vase that you got me
I watched the ups and the downs of
the ripples of a grey white creamy glass
bumpy and textured and not afraid to compete
with carnations, to watch them die, to hold fresh cuts
again, nurses of the garden holding tired, flower
    bones

but beneath the buds on the new frontier
the leaves who work in shadows,
          and the vase that's seen more death than you or I, alone-
                            is your hand
I watch your hand that you present me,
lingered, hanging in the air
like a pear about to fall
the hand that chooses,
picks,
holds flowers,
  and doesn't forget that leaves
and stems and
bark
also need loving-
your hand that holds a vase and then
holds all the garden in
    me.

It was 112 today
and you were standing
on the clean, new floors-
a honey brown like from way back
home (I'm not sure if I'll
get used to this place. It's hot here and I miss
the woods)
you held an ice tray in your
hand,
and you told me you had
woke the night before,
for a moment,
from a dream where it were if you'd never
    met me
so in the desert night, the fan blowing on my face, you grabbed my shoulder
as I was dead in sleep-

to make sure that I was
there
   then you asked me,

your bare feet on the
new, cold floor
  if I wanted a Mai Tai
  
you opened the orange
***

All the poets
in my life are
not writers
at all

They say the sound
of bird song
calms the
body,
rests the
  pulse.

So fly into my
canopy
beneath
a thousand
trees,
darling,
you're like a birdsong
        to me.