Lie Beside the Flower
by Vincent Green

1. I am against
2. The ritual of forgiveness
3. As I am against the rose
4. Who furnishes her
5. Blossom in consolation
6. Only after drawing blood
7. From your hand.
8. Give up finding your way
9. Into the only thing
10. You’ve ever really had:
11. What’s called the present
12. Moment––which blooms
13. Like a morning in the wake
14. Of a lightning storm.
15. Give the gift of flowers
16. Not because they blossom
17. In the vase by the window
18. But because they will
19. Be gone by the end
20. Of the week. Be once
21. Full of sorrow for the flower.
22. Lay them in an empty
23. Room swept clean of
24. All occasion. Lie
25. Beside the flower.
26. Sing the fatal lullaby
27. The song we call forgiveness
28. Until you begin to bloom.
29. What we call “now” is not a gift
30. But a kind of death
31. Whose music is the silence
32. From which everything begins.
33. You can hear it in the sound
34. Of the songless birds,
35. See it in the way
36. The trees are leaning
37. Toward a sea
38. Where light is gleaming.
39. These are the things I can’t remember.
40. No. Not yet. Not at all. Never.