Poem: "Hydrangea"

There is a god’s breath on my hydrangea bush.

Slowly it fell from heaven and condensed as dew

before alighting on the unborn petals.

It whispers to them wordless directions to flourish

before the sun dries up the dew.

Hydrangea, what does your name mean?

“Water-vessel”? Then are you a reminder

of what the eagle snatched from the halls of Troy

as the walls were sung into their height and breadth?

Do your delicate petals, pink and violet,

form a souvenir of the blush and bruises

forged and flamed in the moment a god’s glance

caught your namesake? Or do they tell of what came after:

the fair face of Hector bruised by Achilles’ chariot,

the fair face of Helen and the purple of kingly strife?

If I water you, bearer of water,

what will you give me to remind me

of divine love and ambrosia on Olympus?

If I clear away weeds and thorns,

if I lay down mulch and lay bricks to form a flowerbed

same as the bricks which formed a citadel to Apollo’s singing,

will you return a fraction of that passion of the eagle

that I may feel a god’s breath on my lips?

Tanka

"--over and down,

then past the lilac bush

into the soil--"

the autobiography

of a raindrop.