Rose Cane

I Knew It Was You Who Planted Those Yellow Snapdragons

beside the entry to my silver trailer. From the opposite edge of America, you did it while admiring a vase of yellow flowers in an oil painting. You are that much magician. The eyes of loss and death are peering boldly at us through all things. For this reason, yellow. Yellow really gleams. Studied up close, the petals of most flowers shimmer with a metalline ultraviolet augury of death. Birds see it, and live with zest. Listen, I want to tell you, snapdragons flourished in gravel at both sides of my door. A symmetry of snapdragons became this bower where, finally, you hold me: yellow bower where I, Rose DeMaris, am temporary as you are temporary. Which of us will bury the other? We can’t freeze the vapor of the breaths we have left. Delicate arch, grow thick against death. I used to be that woman of the gravel carrying her fruit and pain, always alone, feeding a bird. Now I’m safe, bound to you by a yoke of green stems. We drink the milk of torn leaves. Listen, I want to tell you, snapdragons can grow even in parched places, but you already knew.

Rose DeMaris’s poems appear in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image Journal, Roanoke Review, Qu, Vassar Review, Cold Mountain Review, Big Sky Journal, and elsewhere. Born in California, she spent many years living, writing, and exploring in Montana before moving to New York City. She is a Poetry MFA candidate at Columbia University, where she’s also a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow.