Ikebana Workshop
Friday, April 6, 2012
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.
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