PASQUEFLOWER

Always the last. Tomorrow I will see only
simple poppies in a sea of mums
and wheat,  hollyhocks, stubble.  Chopped.
I am on the road to Beit Zeyit, and thinking
how, how always you refuse to see

me.  I remember: the hill shone with anemones
narcissus, adonis.  I ran in the mud, my head
thrown back to the skies.  I was three and knew
bliss.  I confided to you that narcissus will not fade
if we persist in looking at the sweet smell of its crown.
You wiped my shoes and hurried to the dining hall

Now the pasqueflowers.  The last ones.  Liat is forty,
an echo rolling and longing in these hills
I smell narcissus every summer, wipe children.  By now
I will never reach you.  I always refuse to see
you.  The spring pushes to its end.  A gray
day collapses into me.

PASQUEFLOWER