These flowers know which birds sip
These flowers know which birds sip
and the ones that guzzle –it’s how each sky
plans its journey for the water it needs
to breed, take in the tears already lush
as yes then yes again till your ears
overflow with sweet talk, can tell
from the echo if it’s a footstep
or someone in love is answering back
with scented dirt as a place to stay
–you dead are always on the listen
let in the shadows these gravestones make
till one by one they become this dam
and the ones that didn’t you let dry
become what you hear leaving someone’s hand
for yours, now empty and in the open.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
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