J.P. Dancing Bear
 
 
Crushed by a Flower

I hear the red blossoms and think perhaps this time
one of them will fall on me and become my heart. Something
I could wear on my shirt, with a little pride at having one
pick me for its body. Oh me and my rogue medallion
dancing down a crowded sidewalk, so certain of everyone’s
envy. I was a tree for so long, and not a single flower
did I sprout and now, look at me: deep in the bare winter
white, picked for a Rite of Spring.
•
Sometimes when the red bloom faces me, I will see
her face instead of the mask she wears now. That fresh
unknown of our first shared glance, her face a seed,
someone to grow with and around. I’ll pull the bloody petals
closer to my eye, smell the soil of her, the water—
everything held so tight it nearly crushes.
 
 

J. P. Dancing Bear is editor of Dream Horse Press. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, most recently Cephalopodic (Glass Lyre Press, 2015), and Love is a Burning Building (FutureCycle Press, 2014). His work has appeared or will shortly in American Literary Review, Crazyhorse, DIAGRAM and elsewhere.