The Irises
            for Charles Wright

A fly quizzical among tufted causeways,
blue sudden avenues spumed overnight from spears.

O silk, my throat closing around a sob.
That fly again, minute leaden tank, thread-hooves,

busy, busy, to whom I mean nothing.
Relief in this.  Yet to me he’s singing beside the dugout, the ditch,

cosmic with pathologies.  A grave matter,
that perfume — father, mother, son, & daughter —

those phrases — no hands, no feet, how else depart,
eyes opened without ceasing —

why I can’t disturb their bruised hymning,
why I gather them all inside, until I’ll know —

By Lisa Russ Spaar
Recipient of the 2011 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize

First published in Slate and forthcoming
from Vanitas, Rough (Persea Books, 2012)
Copyright © Lisa Russ Spaar