Riversong

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

From the watchtower

I saw them, wildflowers

drifting downstream.

 

I followed on foot, from loamy bank

to bank, and found you

in that neglected canoe

 

—you’d chased them, too,

with my heart,

a padlock you’d rescued

 

for pennies on the dollar,

and handed it back to me,

warm, and melting like wax.

 

I’d never been able

to find the key,

but you unlocked it

 

with a poem in Latin,

so haunted, so beautiful,

and unchained all my wildflower tears.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Shay's Word Garden Word List 

dVerse OLN

Rose Water

 

Trembling at the beach

on a day meant for indoors,

 

tossing her ashes

like a paper airplane

 

in the wind,

 

we knew it was

always going to be this way—

 

she was always

going to come back to us,

 

one way or another—

 

her ghost on the cereal box, first thing,

her costumes hanging in the attic,

 

somehow noisily animated

after dark.

 

Each of our eyes

a Lucky Strike,

 

red-rimmed and wondering

how to pilot

 

the rest of it

without her.

 

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For the List at Shay’s Word Garden