Weeds
She doesn’t know why she thinks
of it now—his unexpected phone call,
the hesitant static of goodbye.
As if it were yesterday,
she recalls that first night alone,
the way the bed grew weeds—
gallant soldiers, spear thistle,
black medick—
how, for days, she tossed…
turned…tossed…
lost beneath a milky canopy
of dandelion clouds, her whys
a trowel of tears sifting fog
low in a valley of dead-nettle.
Pervasive, she whispers,
as I watch her eyelids, thin
as time, drift against the wilt
of memory, but
suddenly, clear as a gleaned
field, she says, For a while,
didn’t think I’d last another day,
then talks of God and faith;
how His ways are often peculiar
as a compassionate enemy,
even that creeping vine,
a sign—three leaves.
Let it be.
—
Tammy Daniel was selected as one of the New Voices of 2015 by The Writers Place in Kansas City, Mo. Her work has appeared in I-70 Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Red River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Rusty Truck, and Ink, Sweat and Tears.
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