From The Country Of Magnolia Poem by gregory collins

for Helen Marchut Collins

I am not just going to work today. Even if
the moonbeams are cherries. Even if heaven

is only one layer thick, and i know what
it is dreaming and what flowers drop. Because

my grandmother had a heart attack, and
i am shivering and shivering and collecting in puddles.

Tearing down the curtain of my secret chamber heart,
where petals scatter and heartache has fallen out of favor,

and i think of the past and the evening stars.

I think of marsh waters that overflow, and the mountain bridge
suspended between the farthermost peaks.

Am i stalling like a flowerseed in a diary that knows it was just a dream,
or am i ripples on the water, falling softly over the courtyard of the sea.

Where life becomes gray with age but it won't last for long.
The sun will still shine like a weeping child

And i return without seeing you: A sinking feeling
in my stomach now is born -

And how useless longing for my mother is. She drowned
in tears shed on her. A keepsake that cries for me like God's banners,

and how i would like to weep secretly, and drink for myself too.
How i would like nothing unhappy to remember, because

i cannot even dream where i will be soon. I am in many ways
a perilous love affair pushing home at dawn. I am surrpised

I am a bead of dew at a butterfly of a wide river that lifts up its fists tight.