| Poplar
Catkins |
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| ALAN SOLDOFSKY | |
| Published in Grand Street #42 – Volume 11, Number 2 – Fall 1992 |
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| A
wiry stem jointed in the middle, and half the way up another joint where a branch begins, even thinner, |
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subdividing into clusters of catkins, their heads bent. Their tiny, succulent spikes sporting pollen. The dry grains fall upon my fingertips, |
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my lips almost sticky from them. And in the topmost places white threads radiate, like the hair on a boy's cheek, ready |
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to catch the sea breeze that makes the stalk shake and tremble; all that frail fury dried out in the fields of late afternoon heat. |
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The heads so heavy they lull back, overfilled with a dead sweetness, the after-odor of flowers, flakes of seeds, dark swords of fruit |
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thinner than pen points . The stem, a green whip that could be woven into a wand of flame It says how our names would perish: |
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Marie, Ida, Russell, Naomi. Kept alive by us; monotones of flesh, memorized. We drop our seeds each season, fields of us |
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flourishing as dust that drifts down the coastline of heaven. |
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