The petals look like stars
falling from clustered grapes
each its own galaxy, each its own
unknowable world. High,
floating high
on the heavy night breeze
as if on a sea of air, a boat
thin as a peel of paper
overturns itself
in its escape
from a burning tree.
You are the remains of a world
that God half-dreamed. You are
a massive petal of blue iris
spreading into the dark cluster of space.
You are cornhusk and strawberry sprout.
Watermelon rind and cracked sunflower seeds.
You are rain in the morning, a puddle on a staircase
that never seems to evaporate, a stain weeping
through cold cement. You are eternally grey.
Until you are not.
California sky, where heaven falls
upon the surface of the eye but can never enter.
Where the beauty of a short-lived love and the paradise
of the silent body stay hidden under a vast,
cloudless blue, flat as a monogram, arcing round
and enclosing.
Win