Tulips
Standing tall in the vase, you.
Proud round heads strained upward, stalks straight,
broad curved leaves with tips pointed up too.
I can see you in vast fields, bobbing and massaged by breeze
slowly turning wooden winged windmills on the hill.
A multitude of nameless petal faces, refreshed
after a winter of bulbs slumbering beneath frozen ground
Far away in a land where wooden shoes and voices strange and foreign
Pick through you and see past your ordinary-ness.
I see you in a choked glass of water, too.
Alone in a basement by the window, surrounded by the smell of turpentine
and dust.
Boxes of Christmas decorations and unpacked books
heaped in dark corners and shying from the light.
Weak sunshine spilled past melting snow through the dirty windowpane across your drooping blossom.
Do you dream of that far away land,
surrounded by your kin and bathed in fresh sunlight?
While your petals fall off one by one, here,
and leave black drops of seed scattered across cracked peeling painted wood.
Proud round heads strained upward, stalks straight,
broad curved leaves with tips pointed up too.
I can see you in vast fields, bobbing and massaged by breeze
slowly turning wooden winged windmills on the hill.
A multitude of nameless petal faces, refreshed
after a winter of bulbs slumbering beneath frozen ground
Far away in a land where wooden shoes and voices strange and foreign
Pick through you and see past your ordinary-ness.
I see you in a choked glass of water, too.
Alone in a basement by the window, surrounded by the smell of turpentine
and dust.
Boxes of Christmas decorations and unpacked books
heaped in dark corners and shying from the light.
Weak sunshine spilled past melting snow through the dirty windowpane across your drooping blossom.
Do you dream of that far away land,
surrounded by your kin and bathed in fresh sunlight?
While your petals fall off one by one, here,
and leave black drops of seed scattered across cracked peeling painted wood.