Dandelions By Cheryl A. Rice

The last act is always a blur.

I just loop the first around, never-ending courtship,

flowers, flowers like a spring cemetery,

roots embedded in vases of ice.

Grow with me, grow with me!

My best should be yours.

I pretend to allow for your preferences, but really,

I wait for you to come around!

I wake up to taste the appetizer of your moving man.

I know myself how the mind wanders, 

one in hand, one in bush, one in far off was.

Your slightest kiss is charged with love,

like the watch of a god, true time.

Of all the gin joints, I pick you, ginless,

clear canopy of light between us and the day. 

Dear steps, dear teachers, I am 

a big believer in destiny.

Where our two souls end up in anybody's guess.

Good. Good night. The night is good with you,

enough blanket to cover the winters with.

I conform to your fetal sleep, 

green fins folded to your blue clay rump.

Purple twists our divergent acts, needs of the business.

your slight taste on my tongue is all I keep.

The rest is yours to give again, to give away, to keep.

Two beings is the idea I am trying to absorb.

How to trust? How to wait? We've discussed too much.

I've opened the doors of the coffee shop 

of our mind a hundred times, 

decorated the tables with dandelions and myrrh.

It is all I can dream of.

It is all I can stand.

Cheryl A. Rice is founder and host of the now-defunct “Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Her work has appeared in HomePlanet News, Mangrove, The Temple, and Woodstock Times, among others. Chapbooks include Llama Love (2017: Flying Monkey Press), Moses Parts the Tulips (2013: APD Press), and My Minnesota Boyhood (2012: Post Traumatic Press). In 2014 she was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. Her RANDOM WRITING workshops are held throughout New York’s Hudson Valley. Her poetry blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/.

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