#hashtaghuman

[gretchenheffernan]

#Human | #Primrose

by Gretchen Heffernan

The following is an endangered word

#Primrose

Scent, like a sea

shuttles the bees

in tapping fleets

against my window

where the roses, even

with their thorns, grow

independently beautiful, perhaps

more for the thorn than the petal exquisite

like sorrow with a laugh in it –

The bees are dying,

but not without our flowers.

[gretchenheffernan]

#Human | #Ash

by Gretchen Heffernan

The following are words that are endangered

#Ash

Fear felled me

and I became a stump.  Stuck, I

ran my finger over years

both wet and lean.  

But memory was no medicine

and fires came to test me with their devils.

Ash had a different

meaning then, not a tree,

but a thin dust

that words could scatter.

The choices were gather or disseminate.  

I used this labour to invent branches.

They weren’t real (at first)

though thoughts can behave like molecules

and before you know it

inside your fictions

a leaf will appear.  

An honest bud of progress.

And yes, it will fall.

It may even be ripped from you,

the challenge is believing

another will grow in its place.

The understanding is this:

stories survive longer than we do

and we survive because of their

ability to rise out of our ashes and fly

from mouth to fire breathing mouth.

What we are told is the only real.

[gretchenheffernan]

#Human | #Sycamore

The following are words that are endangered

#Sycamore

Cow parsley spins

in the June sunshine

like a wedding veil.

Down twist the helicopters

from Sycamore trees,

and my child collects them

in her plump hands,

holds a world,

and laughing, sets it awhirl.

I think of how she will become

sometimes victim,

sometimes recipient of timing

while building herself

and how little it will all seem

without risk.  The careful ones

never know the wind

and all the places it can take you.

And she will need

this ability to sprout anew,

to help her limit the time

she’ll spend vandalizing  

herself over thoughts

that are meaningless,

for this, these lessons,

are incurable.  

But for now, I embed a tug

of peace inside the grey

and hope that it’s retrievable.

Outrageous as her womanhood seems,

Outrageous as the lengths I would go

to for her love.

Luck is unjust and beyond

reach, the world

is at war,

here, and not

here, it is the memory

that decides.