I grabbed a few words from the book A God in the House Edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler. The words are “Risks in their form.” I started my poem assuming that would be the title, and I still feel like that title fits the poem, even though I wasn’t trying to keep it.
I see these crocuses, their petals
like the streaks of light that make
a star a star, tendrils of yellow
stretched by distance, space, time.
Crocuses are stars at their turning.
The flowers will wilt, petals curling
like the fingers of a paralyzed hand.
Just as every star is in a new phase of dying.
Even when root and bulb are buried white
in the earth, death is there. Stars are not immune.
They find darkness, the black holes they form
a tearing apart, an upending of their form,
similar to the dilated pupils of the dead
widening up like a toothless maw
to swallow all the light in the universe.
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The final image of this poem is just stunning. Again, you do a lovely job inserting the human experience into the void. We are like stars; none immune. And yet, you manage this without sentimentality or pity. Bravo!!
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