Unlike my empty hands,
it does not just lie there
with its flowers opening
up on white bed linen.
All its seeds jettisoned,
its future guaranteed
for at least another
season, this jewel-weed,
asks for nothing that I
cannot give it. It basks
in my sunlight, breathes in
my exhalations as fast
as I can breathe them out,
again. Still, we are both
waiting for the nurses
to make their rounds, the sun
to rise up, then subside,
for the moon and the stars
to appear and disappear,
for winter’s frost to turn
us into limp black rags.
Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places, but now calls North Carolina home. Her recent publications include FLORIBUNDA and BOGBOUND. Some of her poems have appeared or will soon appear in Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street, Iconoclast, Pinyon Review, Rattle, Slant, and The Stand. An avid bird-watcher, she shares a home with her husband, four housecats, and a backyard full of birds.
