Song of the Shy Anemones
Buy me . . . a voice,
or is it the wind?
Buy me. Is it the wind or
the Mediterranean—
from a bucket of tin
five large dark pupils
are begging, so I buy,
I buy, but before
I’ve reached my door
these visitors from a far-off sea
have retreated like
dancers behind fans.
Shy flowers, dip into
my high vase of cool water.
“No one is an enemy to water”
a proverb lies—
all my life water has unnerved me.
But your pliable straws draw deep
and you expand scarlet-mouthed
as the most ardent singers
who turn themselves inside-
out to reach the heart’s song.
O you must include pain
when you bargain with beauty . . .
The stem that entered
the ear and bloomed out
of the eye its blood-flower
is your kin.
Open all day, you displayed
in shaded saucers
hubs dense as the snoots
of cats, crowns of stamen
black as crows or the woes
of widows. Night makes you
plicate, your cups
cloister moist air.
How alone I am
passing through your room
in my robe of blue birds
on bare branches.
Do I dare peek inside
your inked wells?
Dare I pry, touch my nose
to your core and drink—
or would you ensnare me,
lift me far off
to some windy garden
near the sea that could bury me,
bury me, the way in dreams
the tide rises and rises and rises
till a giant petal of water curls
so high over my body—
I must wake or die
Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of four collections of poetry including Burning of the Three Fires (BOA Editions) and Letters from Limbo (CavanKerry Press). Read more.
“Song of the Shy Anemones” originally appeared in the I-70 Review.