seeds of home
here is the lie at the centre of the seed -
- that home is a promise a place a need. Here in the eye of the storm that I raise what is the difference between home and away The flowers fester while still in the earth they fail to thrive die where they were birthed And here is the trouble, bitter and dark here is where silence has left its mark here is the fate that you dare not see the roots that are rotten and the decaying tree Home is a need and a promise and a place home is an open and friendly face home is a trick and a nest and a trap and when you escape there’s no going back. |
blue crocus
we used to grow blue crocuses
in the backyard. Between the houses row on row the asphalt pavement breaks and cracks Between the fences and the driveways the dandelions and the moss gather where the sunshine brews and reach towards the watery drops of gutter bending towards gutter and dewshine on the windowpanes. There are no blue crocuses. There are no birds in the sea. There are no angels in the sky. There are no people like me. --- Between the houses row on row the winds rage and scream and wail and blow and the voices of the dead in a choir of wistful spite batter the walls of a place they left behind. the cracks in the cellar walls drip with tuber root. --- we used to grow blue crocuses in the backyard they were purple in evening light black in twilight sometimes green at dawn we shooed away the weeds - -let them make their own way through asphalt cracks and mortared brick tough enough to make it on their own. --- no hands stop a storm or make the rain cease to fall no voice asks the wind not to blow or the earth not to turn. The roads become rivers that lead to the sea. There are no blue crocuses There are no people like me. and the flooded pavement’s overflow between the fences and the bricks trickles back down to the ocean between the houses row on row. |
Elliott Dunstan is a queer Romanichal Ottawa-based poet and author, previously published by Bywords, In/Words Magazine & Press, and Queen of Swords Press. He is currently publishing a serial on his website elliottdunstan.com, and may or may not have a thing about evil flowers.