Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling— smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams drifted out of old smokes— trillions of icily peltering notes out of just one canary, all grown to song as a plant to its stalk, from too long craning at a sky-light and a square of second-hand blue. <br /> <br /> Silvery-strident throat— <br /> so assiduously serenading my brain, <br /> flinching under <br /> the glittering hail of your notes— <br /> were you not safe behind… rats know what thickness of… plastered wall… <br /> I might fathom <br /> your golden delirium <br /> with throttle of finger and thumb <br /> shutting valve of bright song. <br /> <br />II <br /> <br /> But if… away off… on a fork of grassed earth <br /> socketing an inlet reach of blue water… <br /> if canaries (do they sing out of cages?) <br /> flung such luminous notes, <br /> they would sink in the spirit… <br /> lie germinal… <br /> housed in the soul as a seed in the earth… <br /> to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles <br /> on the mouth. <br /> Or glancing off buoyantly, <br /> radiate notes in one key <br /> with the sparkle of rain-drops <br /> on the petal of a cactus flower <br /> focusing the just-out sun. <br />Cactus… why cactus? God… God… somewhere… away off… cactus flowers, star-yellow ray out of spiked green, and empties of sky roll you over and over like a mother her baby in long grass. And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees, pricking multiple leaves at his amazing story.<br /><br />Lola Ridge<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cactus-seed/
