Girls with Gardenias

I think some of you

would have  been musical

like my brother;

rhythm travels the pulsing red highways

and encrypts itself in clustered cells.

You may have felt him play the pipes;

it filled my veins with immense

thrumming, like a midsummer beehive.

I’ve imagined you as tall grey- eyed

young men on a cabin porch

where I sit in a straight backed chair, squirrel

rifle over my knees

and the eyes of Katie Elder,

but in dreams you are

girls with corsages of gardenias

tied with ribbon to wrists

white and curved as handles

of china teacups.

When the night is still,

you have your own rhythm.

I cannot find an end to your voices,

and this is the source of the thrumming now.

If I planted a tree for each

a hundred years from now

they would dwarf my losses;

if I laid out white stones

the mist and the moss

could sleep there like lovers

and keep what they make.

If I gave up longing

perhaps I could hope to find you.

I do try to forget:  

every cool touch I cannot lay on your brow,

every peppermint sticky hand

I cannot hold.