Yellow Had Been the Sun
How many buttercups
did I destroy that summer
rubbing their slick yellow petals free
of gloss and color. I was nine.
I could not stop—
their petals, slippery and bright
as though wet like the terrace stones
lit by rain that day my father slipped
and hit his head.
Before sleep that whole summer,
I’d imagine the loud tumbling
of white stone bingo balls
in the metal-barred globe
my brother would spin
though in truth the house was quiet
except for the sometime scritch
of squirrel on our old slate roof.
And I’d think of the large flat rock
where we warmed ourselves
after swimming in the brackish pond,
bits of algae and buttercup
petals like yellow
fish scales, slick to our skin,
and of the rock that slammed
a blood clot into father’s brain.
And all I could imagine
was a red balloon,
like the one in Le Ballon Rouge,
the soft spiral of its thick white string
as it slipped from Pascal’s hand.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches at The 92nd Street Y and is Associate Editor at-large for Plume Poetry. Read more.