The Sunny Days

The Unwitnessed Flower (Part II)

The flower awakens before her witnesses,

and turning her tiny face up toward the sun,

his warmth arrives without needing her beauty;

she meets his bright cheek with her open mouth,

then wears the morning’s dress simply for herself.

The insects come and praise what they see,

oh how drunk on the short-lived velvet of her.

She likes their little hymns and lets them hover,

but praise is just sunshine with a tongue;

it stays awhile, then goes off somewhere else.

Her roots have other loyalties below,

to earth accepting what no wing can love,

and rain entering every pore without judgment,

and the earth holding fast as petals lose their time;

nothing under her asking for a thing.

At dusk the moon passes the sun

while laying her body across the garden.

She keeps the flower feminine and fair,

covers her softly through the cooler hours,

and asks for nothing of the flower in return.

The insects may come back. She often notices they do.

Their praise is sweet, their company brief,

and neither makes a promise of forever.

A wing and root were never built alike;

she finally knows it without bitterness.

Her life belongs to things that know of return:

the rain, the dirt, the moon, and her faithful sun.

She turns her face toward what has always fed her,

beautiful, and unwitnessed.

Marni Fraser

0905.2026

XI:LI A.M.

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