I didn't write any of these poems, by the way.
They're all borrowed poems, and I just--
one of these days, I'm going to rid myself of self-deprecation.
I don't know when it's going to happen.
I'm going to read "Dandelions."
It's the longest poem in the book,
but it's really not much longer than "Animals."
And I've never read it before.
And it's one of my favorite poems in the book.
As to why I've never read it before,
I'm always fearful that I'm going
to lose the attention of the audience,
even though it's not that long.
"The man who invented the breeze was happily
married to the woman who discovered the wind.
They bore no children and they had no pets.
They lived on a hill overlooking a meadow of wildflowers.
When spring came, the man congratulated his wife,
and the woman congratulated her husband.
When all the blooming came and went
and October began spilling gray, neither faulted the other
for the landscape that showed no memory of friends or neighbors.
But inside, the man always believed the wind was to blame.
And inside, the woman always believed
it was a succession of small breezes
that was at the root of all the deflowering,
though neither said a word in this direction for many years.
When November was spilling quiet and the last blue errand
had written itself out of the sky, the man turned to his wife
and gently inquired, had I not invented the breeze,
do you think the wind would have ever come?
Without a pause, she replied, the breeze
is a bereft child that has never evolved from its protean state.
The brisk outside air hushed itself inside,
and the tension that grew between husband and wife
stretched the bones of silence.
But when the bruising was all said and done
and January began spilling white, neither faulted
the other for the landscape that had now burrowed its way
into the house.
The house that bore neither children nor pets
now see that all evidence of life but for the elderly couple
who moved about like barren trees on an empty stage.
The roof and windows were all that
protected their frail beings, and they held each other
at night to lend anchor to all that remained, themselves.
As February began spinning storms and icicles,
the inventor of the breeze and the discoverer of the wind
were sculpted into a white figure by a blizzard.
Not until spring returned spilling green
did the frozen embrace of husband and wife
melt itself and dissolve into the air.
Lime shoots shot themselves out of dead grass
where a dining table with candlesticks
had once stood, reaching for the shafts of light.
Spring now splintered through the roof.
And when all the blooming came and went,
purple cornflowers and prairie sunflowers stood defiant.
The brutal winter that followed preceded a modest spring,
where a sea of common dandelions waved from the meadow
beyond the windows of the empty house.