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Flower Power


by Darryl Price


"Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels."--William Carlos Williams


There is something beautiful I want to say 
to you that doesn't seem to make much 
more sense in a box of clever words 
like this one. It feels closer to words 

than not words, but more like what you 
might expect me to grunt or groan up 
real close--stuck on or against almost--to 
a huge sky full of clearly ripened opening 

stars. I've been there before you see, so 
the whole thing is neatly tattooed in my 
invisible head at all times, like a benevolent 
trauma. It has already become me. What that 

means is every now and then I can 
look straight down at my writing hands, even 
my arms,  and see there a pulsating Milky 
Way stretched beneath, inside. I don't know if 

that is a bad or a good sign, 
but it doesn't feel too bad, just strange. 
But it does gives me some point of 
reference for what I'm trying to send off 

to you right now. Poets are always trying 
to share words that are made from what 
it feels like to be next to another, 
altogether different feeling than the one they are 

supposed to be experiencing. They can't help it--
it's what they do. It's neither clever nor 
particularly inventive, but it can be sparkling, and 
perhaps that is the meaning of any flower. 

This particular one is for you, that I 
am sure of, even if I'm not sure 
of its hidden fragrance. That it got all 
on its own. Like you'd want it to.
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