A tulip grows and blooms in secrecy,
emerging only to show its slow dying,
petals falling as prayers from a wheel,
curling toward oblivion again.
Dreams suspend, idling in the dusk,
and the day lingers, repeating itself
like men in need of memories
or women in need of permanence.
Whisper the dark gods, ancient deities
who grow here under roses with faded names,
root, grow, root here in the tangled sameness
of the earth who holds our truths
close to the vest, close to the damp.
Here in this waiting place, here enter
into the heart of some country not your own.
Learn our true names
as you bend, inexorably, toward the unavoidable sun.

Nicola J. Donaven
Copyright 2001, all rights reserved.