Poem For You
I started this poem with a flower
and it was raining
crackling in sheets across the roof.
It was late and I
should have already been asleep.
The thunder struck close and I was startled.
That flower had long since drowned
and my poem had gone to rot,
but the point is
no matter how I begin
some piece of you always crops up --
whether it is your strong jaw,
your country twang,
or your mutilated thumb.
Because that flower I was thinking of
is on the struggling rosebush
that your mother planted in your childhood front yard.
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