Ikebana Workshop

Ikebana Workshop

For this she has clipped the wings

Of Jane’s tree and bucketed monks head

And stolen rose hips from a mass of vines

On a roadside stretch while her husband

Perpetuated the crime.  Beauty being in

The bend of things and in the wide

Omnivorous eye

Of a bloom. 

We are to watch for thorns,

She says, and for architecture.

We are to turn the subject back

On itself and lift the object’s chin

And make room for spaces in

Between, and nothing is lovelier

Than the odd one thing, and turgor

Is a word she’d buy, a word she gives away

For free.  Her best friend died this summer,

And in the earthen room

In which we work, there are

Her best friend’s things: 

Pods and kenzans and ceramic half moons and the name

Helen, which she joins with honor

And stem. 

We are women working in shadow

And with inversions and toward the faith

She teaches us to have

In the line between the lines

Of stolen hips and wings.  

— Beth Kephart, posted as part of the Savvy Verse and Wit National Poetry Month Blog Tour.