The Purple Foxglove (a poem)

The Purple Foxglove (a poem) by L. Edgar Otto 04-13-10

Your large head and small frame
the warmth of your skin, we tread lightly\
gentle play aware of your toddling
the protruding chest as if someone built
A larger engine than the old jalopy's design
replaced the hood with a domed slag pile
you tore pages in the Old Lady's bleeding
blood red book in the rain she let me keep for its maps
I told them I was not mad and it was no unlucky omen
just that you were trying to take the Bible pictures out
then I taught you how to wind the music box
gave you my farmer in the dell of colorful spinning creatures

Only when the first snow fell I resolved to spend the day with you
Nothing could be done two faced the fate knowing I'd lose you again

We were teary eyed even before our father stood
in uniform as if to formally announce United States would not be callihng
but your dream did not leave us yet, lingered on
hospital folds by themselves your corner of the bed
I tried to live twice as much and through your eyes change
that you never knew your first love and I
searched the earthly books for cures in your name
only when you let me go no longer we two our guardian angles
The new socks they bought you did not ware out, fresh forever
somewhere in your spaceship your resting bleeding heart in stasis
through flowers fade so fragile plucked and myths renewed
I did not think the Christ of the infant Andes would crumble

Marble wash away, letters blurred and vandals desecrate
I meant to visit you, bring flowers, as I have done in dreams



I still traveling in the tightrope of time
learned it could all be changed back somewhere
with our child eyes and faith, small our world's beginnings
I made a difference, brought lesser cures before
The fact they were not there, confounded the confused doctors
yet playing with time is a meaningless, pointless sculpting
who can count on or promise someday the healers will
care to return or even know our doings can
Change the fates unseen small steps here for our sister worlds
we did not give up our explorations in the mudflats
nor get stuck in the cane and methane at high tide
we flew, became like the red wing blackbirds, infinite our cobs of corn

Every lesser creature sought grain, spoke through its soul but I
Could not cherish or change by my dollop of magic for less than you

Now as the Lilly of my own less sacred heart begins to fold back within
I see the prison no sacred ground the shell of your burnt out house
full of soot and ashes, too costly to restore and yet
I cherish your relic bones and flight in ageless wisdom
Living a space of fertile emptiness that blossoms again
Yet, I would visit a place, a castle gutted of
all things, time and fire's limits, its scars stone walls
so death buries the dead after all as even fire vanishes
I can no longer walk through those walls nor am I moved
to bleeding fingers anymore with you trying to escape
as if that solace outweighs the black hole in the landscape
or in recapitulation my reptilian triune chambered heart blue baby too

What does it matter if I decipher all the runes in the world
If I cannot find again that once and earthly pattern of your unique soul?

* * *