What Time Is
When nothing remains but the distances
between cities the empty miles
when the cities themselves are ruins
what do you call the Earth
pregnant with corpses and sleeping bombs?
How about: the silhouette of a ghost.
Time has turned back
to what it was: the crocus that lifts
the lid of its coffin,
the daffodil that climbs from its crypt.
What name do you give a handprint in concrete?
How about: sorrow smuggled past
the border guards, tucked inside laughter.
How about: cascade of ash.
Look: the black-eyed Susans return in droves
to the same spots along the roadside
like migrant birds.
And the decapitated rose regrows two heads.
What do you call the peony
of immobile explosion,
the faceless daisy,
fateful marigold?
Call them one heart honeycombed with loss.
Say: ranunculus, crasher of weddings.
Say: bluebell, which mourns the orphanhood
of the sunflower.
Say: chrysanthemum,
whose name is a prayer.
Gregory Fraser is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Marble Hour: New & Selected Poems, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. Read more.