Iconography

Iconography

Iconography

The image wears large round glasses opaque blue
bigger than her upper face
I don’t know what she means. You image
He stood there elected. In your eyes – 
he would escape from the auto parts store to come home and read.

As I see him dead he has black hair and brown eyes
he doesn’t have to wear glasses because he’s dead.

I haven’t seen a desert lily in twenty years
but knowing they exist thrills me. One year
I went home and they were everywhere
powerful, blooming to exist and in my eyes. As I could be that
And I’ll always see it. Presidents are scum
compared to desert lilies. Oh all right, Daddy says.

The dead talk this way playing but they don’t need to write
lines – this line of thought.
I still don’t quite know what your poems are like.
Immediate – but complex. Lily? As complex as that?
As complex as us. We are seeing you . . .   
As we speak and see, together, thinking it.
Do the words relax you? We are them,
reading. Being dead is like reading.