Diary 

​

Summers in Florida, sunshine was always losing to thunder

and we were beholden to its constant interruption—

even when it didn’t come, its possibility kept us in—

thick clouds poised and stretching dark above the pool,

though the swim team still changed into suits, began their drills

whether the whistles would or wouldn’t sound.

Daily, I sketched the hydrangea outside my window—

watching what I knew would come up from its unseen root,

through its stick of a stem to a single celestial bloom,

would unfold despite petals drying and the wear of cold—

to know for the next year where the thin green sprout

would lead, grown as much by instinct as by illumination.

The light was an ink filling the darkness and held

what I won’t forget of gardens, of the wide oaks

and bodies of blossoms which I drew within the confines

of the penciled boxes I allotted them,

their shape without their color, a flipbook of a form

that rises, falls, rises, blossoms, falls, rises, holds, holds—.