| Purple Rockets
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I suddenly looked up and there it was, filigreed against the stones, a purple rocket, its blooms and nascent pods outdodging shadow leaves a spectral sycamore had played against the house. How out of time it seemed and past remembering a rocket's seeds could, in a million random touches, commonplace the ground with purple promise. We celebrated rockets for their grace and wished for nothing in their place. They were our loving hardihood and we, a random two, welcomed rockets no matter where they grew. The purple rockets wither winterward: Flapping pods on bony fingers shake hollow admonitions to the wind, the plant I saw last spring, a lifeless husk; Your hardihood, the flattened straw, mine clinging to marcesent leaves. When young you climbed a sycamore and grappled with its boughs, the shadow leaves imprinting on you hair. I stood beneath its shadow when the purple rockets bloomed-- Time and the sun have sped you past their spell. But suddenly I look up and there you are beside the pine mixing with the random earth your dust and phantom seeds of countless purple rockets. |
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