Once upon a train station
I watched a couple embrace
with such sparkler-urgency
arrival or departure
didn’t matter.
Elsewhere on the platform
a little boy with a fistful of daisies,
dirt still fresh on the roots,
and a woman
not his mother, neither hand
reaching–
this is the way
the saddest metamorphosis
begins.
Ever since then
I’ve wanted the dazzling sun
to be seduced by heliotropes
and not always
the other way around.
~
Often longing
forks like the tongue of a hummingbird.
Often each path
offers its own dead ends. In other words
every old ache
is one part pollen
and one part nectar. Even now you’re
wonderfully misplaced
like my favorite bedtime story
read out loud in the morning.
~
The kindest thing I’ve ever done
was lie
about every person at that station
until you fell asleep.
Only then did I tell you
what happened to the boy.