Buttercups

A Persian legend tells of a prince who falls in love with a nymph. One ending says, after the prince serenades the nymph day and night, they fall in love and wed. Another common ending says the nymph gets so annoyed by the prince, she turns him into a buttercup to silence him.

beautiful buttercups
silent golden kisses –
seen and not heard

Lately my struggle deepens with the perception that I am too loud, too much, too everything. It could be said that my life's calling is setting fires with the only problem being they lack the safe location of a hearth.

And suddenly I wish I wasn't allergic to cats.

We fall asleep in separate rooms, each tethered to our moonless cave of caves. Nations of geese leave for elsewhere yet I am still here. September begins the end.

God, Vermont in October would be . . . I can't even say it.

This unforgiving distance. This inability to lay down in the field of me.

Pot roast in the slow cooker and a week's worth of rice on the stove. The setting for my favorite dream has to do with food, ferns and fucking. We could keep to the woods, you know. We could chase the river downstream all the way to the sea. We could fall into bed whereby you read to me and I doze into a different dream. We don't choose this because we love others more than ourselves, which is just another way of saying we really don't know how to love quite yet.

But I am a buttercup, the product of annoyance, the vessel for a well-contained fire. I'm not settling for this; pick me and know.