I took a blessing for the flowers
Tightening around me in the night
Like precious fertile years
Lost, to my individuality
Jealous with knots of
Passionate self-interest
Like dust under
An unused wedding gown
Then I followed the day
That turned into lonely decades
The terror of being unable to build building-blocks
Of love, of family, of normalcy
I heard stories that turned into theory
At weddings, of people who never made it
Girls sailing over the blooms of my mouth
I was getting old for watching them
With a hungry face, or a heavy heart
In the end I had disdain for the fragments
Of small affections I accumulated
The cynicism spilled while watching friends
Busy in their nesting frenzies
I took a blessing for the flowers
As you harvested the beauty of your worth
Light and splendor, like sleeping orchids
Woke up in you, when you became a mother
But I wasn’t to be your husband
Nor would I be invited to the holy procession
Of your vault of the power of the bonds that do not die
Long live the unknown machine
Of heart, that I was unable to grow
Into finely meshed lives of stable prosperity.
