Catechism with Drought Watch
Though the wild irises go on blooming, folding
the evening’s cobalt into their own. Cerulean,
ultramarine: all the words for blue
standing in for what can’t, what
won’t. No matter how dry
the creekbed, beauty keeps chafing
at the wrists’ thin skin, pressing itself
through the kitchen window where we stood
last night to watch the doe
and her nursing fawn. Ask and ask
and ask to be forgiven, someone, maybe
a saint, once said. Ask what doesn’t
enter, though it comes
so close. Clouds pass,
rainless. Ask me to tell you
a story: I can’t. But I can
say flag’s the other name
for iris, or for the tail
of a deer: a bright thing raised
as warning, vanishing between the trees.
KASEY JUEDS is the author of two collections of poetry from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Read more.