When you’re alive you get to
recognize hematite,
azurite, smoked quartz
lovely, eh?
in sticky black silk
And watch simplicity
become complex in management
“Only bow when bowed to”
Go look at the sunset
Inspiration for a bunch of numbers
heralding the close of the Xian calendar
and new age metaphysical smoothies
Suddenly, I looked up, and everyone had white hair
People go in and out of your life, and your life
is a room filled with flowers and a kitchen cooking supper
and you have wrested the inscrutable from the obvious
or the other way around
We are called the exquisite bloom of February
We are called wild and grow freely
Very very annoying are people who arrive
an hour and a half late for lunch
This poem appears in the book “As Ever: Selected Poems” by Joanne Kyger.
