Flirt With Fire

Poppies flirt with fire.
Crimson fragrance of disheveled roses
on promiscuous wind.
Pollen makes its spaceless pilgrimage
from pistil to stamen
like the wandering of God's name
from your forehead to your chest.
Bees brew honey in clandestine places
buzzing with the flavor of darkness.
These are small but generous signs
that your soul is not a thing
but the dance of what you must become
in the diamond of your death.
I speak, dear, not of the body
but the sparkling gift
of impermanence.
You've let sorrow break your heart.
Why not let joy?
Why not lick the moonlight from your fingers,
tasting of thunder?
There's an emptiness between
your breastbone and belly
where inhalation and exhalation kiss,
effusing starry musk.
Worlds can happen in that sticky dot
of incomprehensible sweetness.
The sign that you have been there
is a teardrop
enfolding your whole mind
in blue silence.
Never underestimate the surface of things.
It is a portal to the depths
of heaven and hell.


Painting by Georgia O'Keefe