Anne Doe Overstreet – As a Flower of the Field [Poem]
As a Flower of the Field
Anne Doe Overstreet
from the collection
Delicate Machinery Suspended,
TS Poetry Press, 2011.
The newest TS Poetry Press book! ***
Listen, we have always known—
in this place of grass, in this season
of blazing light—of loss
by fire, of death
by flame. It is as if
we have been waiting all of our lives,
gathering the ephemeral Night-Blooming
Cereus, loving the summer constellations.
Some years the sky is a thickening vine,
fat with water that does not fall. Nevertheless,
in the late hour, in the shadow
of the tilted earth, we come to the table
and fall to our knees. We consume
Orion and the Bear with red sauce and beans
to burn out the taste that sits
in our mouths like an unspoken word.
– ——
Anne Doe Overstreet is a poet and editor. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Asheville Poetry Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, DMQ Review, and Cranky, among others. She and her husband, novelist and film critic Jeffrey Overstreet, reside in Shoreline, Washington.
