Dreaded Whispers

Cotinus Young Lady-SmokeBush-writingasitcomes

Been gardening again… love this plant.

Strokes of moonlight smother
the inflorescent
whispers of the smoke bush

wavering against twilight’s
ghostly dreams
while pondering the water,
pondering depth and death.

Subdued, hushed panicles warp,
subtly interwoven
inside black steel ripples
made by water splashed sedge warblers
flung across the sheen of bleak, black,
stretched canvas

where streaks of my childhood run
wildly ‘til they bleed into the perfect wash –
disrupted only briefly by daubs of
my more morbid notions –

a thousand indigo butterflies
dotted like inky death
become pinned to the eerie flatness of water
and of life –

finally, my drowning memories
are absorbed by stagnant fluid –
the whispers are hushed in the black, dead air
where mosquitoes live instead,
and for the first time, I begin to thrive.