dark fossils
enough to sing
of dotted orchids.
BY CAMILLE MARTIN
- - - -
like a child in the prairie dark
dreaming of buried fossils
when others perceive only dots,
the shade of a lizard's tail is enough
to liberate the colors and sing
of aluminum cans and orchids.
"the sky is so blue," said the orchid,
"but i will soon be gone like the dark
floral chambers of which i sing
and of which my drunken fossil
in the failing light will never see enough
on the horizon of expanding dots."
like illuminated puzzles, shiny boats dot
the river, listing with the fervor of the orphan orchid,
shaking loose their barnacled anchors while enough
delectable panic spreads into dark
nests of fragmented lullaby fossils
that swab the unborn deck as they sing.
hearkening to what the colors on a rare stamp sing,
i rock drunken babies with pinwheels, dodging dots.
tombs with one space more and an inside-out fossil
sleep like the death of an orchid,
as my eyes wander in a clarion place in the dark
library of kudzu. the horniness was never enough,
but you were always enough,
baby, to make me sing,
applying your vision, dark
and steep, to these dots
of double orchid
and to the present fossil
before anyone discovered the starry fossil
of the history of radios. i will never have enough
songs of infinite orchid
as before you now and living i sing
with reddish tones and glass carnation dots.
and as the sound of a clarinet pierces the dark,
i remember you, orchid, as i sing
of the fossil of the inner shell and enough
dots corner the inscrutable and resonant dark.
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