All morning I feed the petals
more and more warm water
the way a child just born
already knows to kiss head down

that all that’s left from the sky
is air and in this emptied pail
a few mouthfuls, a sun
day by day growing taller

glistening with talons, feathers
rivers that eat from under their sea’s
loving lullabies and drownings
and in my hand the tin pail

leans down to watch its reflection
darken from thirst and loneliness
and the ground—I don’t dare look up

—the light tying to blind these flowers
—you can feel the wrinkles where my eyes
were clawed—you think it’s just me
that flowers don’t need to see how this rain

comes softly from my hand or how
you lifted it to your breasts
and make a morning, year after year
from blues and green and mud.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website.

Homepage photograph via Flickr by eflon