magnolias and lilies

A poem on friendship, remembrance, and forgetting.

the sun dances on limbs

barreling down hills

lost friends

ovules of circlets that will

never met again in the

same way;

loosed like careless friendships

ones that haunt us with their

carcasses long after they've forgotten

us in the synagogue or left us

to play in traffic �"

and i roll down this valley

kissed by memory

intruding on some intimate osculation

dragons of emotion not mine

grow in the flowers,

casting out a fragrance sweeter than

snowflakes caught on the tongue 

on the thirty first of december before 

the charm is undone

in february dirt dusted white;

plucking all the purity i can from them i kiss

only my own petulant snatches of

photographs, good memories and bad

wilted magnolia dreams,

and scarlet lily wings sewn into the fabric

of sunsets �"

i wonder if all life is remembering

and forgetting simply so it can be 

forgotten and remembered

by someone new. 

- linda m. crate