Anemones

I wanted a window looking out over tall ryegrasses,
a wind bending them toward me, but there were only

more houses, more lawns littered with failing gardens
and stray sprigs of anemone. He was the white violets’

insisting bloom, taking on the blush of morning
in the June-swelled air of that little room, the accruing

weight of love. With trash-bagged bundles of pop cans,
we’d tread to the store, maples fanning overhead,

our words the timbre of promises too grown-up for us.
Women in the check-out aisle had years of sighs filling

their smoggy stares, their skin as parched as the soil
of their garden beds. I wanted a field wider than sky,

but this was a place where desires fell to the ground
and sprouted as anemones, scattered, rooted to the base

of forgotten houses. Now, I sit and lean my head against
the whirring windows of city buses, coursing through

entanglements of commerce and need, knowing nothing
of fields. Somewhere, he is still blushing with daybreak;

somewhere, white violets open themselves under a dawn
where our old joy rends into summer and I am far,

drawing the curtains across another window facing
more houses, more lawns, a few stray sprigs of anemone.