Red
Ranunculus on your thin stem, surrounded
by buds that hang like Art Deco lamps,
like drooping heads, but slightly ominous, nearly
reptilian. Ranunculus with your black heart
and slightly ruffled petals, your leaves
long and jagged-edged, you go casually dressed
unlike the rose, say, or the iris,
and have gotten yourself such fiery gypsy skirts.
See how fierce a red. On anyone else
it would be trashy, unseemly. On you, it is passion.
All night, I saw it in my sleep, that red,
saw it as I first did, encountering you almost at dusk
on the garden trail to the sea. I stopped, stared.
Ah, ranunculus, he isn’t mine, but if I could wear that red,
I'd dance for him with castanets.
Susan Kolodny is a retired psychoanalyst and psychotherapist on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Read more.
“Red” was first published in her book After the Firestorm, published by Mayapple Press.