Wisteria

she was wisteria, i think, wisteria
in its short bloom, she was warm days and cold nights
in mud season when blades come out of the soil
where they’ve been hiding like swords,
mute in moonlight. she was remarkable,
and i was lost as soon as she left me.
it was a night and a day and a night before i cried
for her. a long sweep of hours in numb succession.

if this is grief, i said, it is a cold wind. and a cold
night followed.  unseasonable time.  the flowers on the early vines
shriveling.  i wept in the privacy of the bedroom
that was empty. emptied myself i cried more, the walls
inside me melted and i sweated them out.  was paper thin
after.  light passed through me and from within i was lit.

this is her doing, i told myself.  that i have been
illuminated by her.  that i shine.  she was more than i had
thought to say of her, some sun of a distant unglimpsed sky
over a world i hadn’t explored, and i cried again as i would
and still do.  she was wisteria, forsythia, the very bones
of spring unedited by interpretation, a sun i will not see again

and so i fail and enter a twilight of weeping and indulge the urge
to create and recreate the moment when i lost a chance
to stop and listen and let her expand within me as i should.
the moment of loss is deep weather, a season of interruption
when the simplest answers go unnoticed.  i should have been
motionless and perhaps i could have held her here,
or perhaps not.  she was wisteria, she had her time,
was gone. i remain. i weep, i shine with her within me
and light nothing around me.