shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Grace Marie Grafton


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After the diagnosis

Maybe I should listen for a different music.
More tambourines or a wail in the middle of a song –
one I used to love with its back country twang.
Or a tune I could only hear the way starlight
holds a crystal in its core. They say the aging
mind can grow gardens again if one were to
court stranger blooms. I've always loved
the iris, the poppy. Seed, tuber. Shall I
introduce into my drier beds a cactus whose
name I have not learned? Should I overwater
one small patch to keep alive a giant
fern, ancient botanical citizen, that will
listen to my unanswerable questions as I
sit on the chair I just made out of willow-
withes? Sit, hear the fern teach me
how to play a greener note?