Huge lurid tulips
Painted on cream basement walls
Meant to be cheery but done
Such that each flower looks
As if beneath glass and yet so loud:
The memory of a dead child’s laugh,
A burble in the garden, a pain
You learn to want, a way you walk
Through the trellis these days
Misty eyed and full of religion,
You went to see the elder
For comfort and disappointingly
It was exactly what he gave,
When there is still that laughter
Floating higher and higher
Having broken its string
And the downy clouds framing it
As the dot of color seems to sink
Into their eiderdown and horses clop
The avenue with bells and caps
And there is loud clapping,
You turn away from the sky
And everything’s as lost as you’d wanted
but can’t stand having wanted
And you’ll never sit in the garden
With bright juice pushing your memory
To winters when you dreamed of just this juice,
To a vista with crows above snow
Like in a bad painting: calligraphic
And far enough away to make beauty
A trick of distance.
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