Child Naming Flowers

When old crones wandered in the woods,

I was the hero on the hill

in clear sunlight.

Death’s hounds feared me.

Smell of wild fennel,

high loft of sweet fruit high in the branche-s

of the flowering plum.

Then I am cast down

into the terror of childhood,

into the mirror and the greasy knives,

the dark

woodpile under the fig trees

in the dark.

It is only

the malice of voices, the old horror

that is nothing, parents

quarreling, somebody

drunk.

I don’t know how we survive it.

On this sunny morning

in my life as an adult, I am looking

at one clear pure peach

in a painting by Georgia O’Keefe.

It is all the fullness that there is

in light. A towhee scratches in the leaves

outside my open door.

He always does.

A moment ago I felt so sick

and so cold

I could hardly move.