Poetry | Lena Moses-Schmitt

I am flinging images all over myself: 

a spray of orange

tulips, fringed with highlighter yellow. 

An airplane drawing a hard white line 

for emphasis: THIS is the SKY!

The moon’s silver scarf over the black water, soft 

conversation through the night.

Dabs of blue, the ocean fossilized on a palette.

It’s not working this time. I still feel dizzy,

dizzy and done for. Rilke said no feeling is final. 

A century later Vigdis Hjorth wrote

Feelings come back, just you wait. I walk them out

but she’s right. They come back, 

they come back. 

Toast. Email. Cloudy at noon. Returning a call,

returning to the corner to observe a tree 

radiate the sun into five long spokes of gold.

Watching people pretend to be friends 

and talk over one another on the television.

Is what I’m doing something one could call living?

The rain comes early this fall. Em dashes

on the window. Yellow paint on a highway

introducing itself cheerfully 

whenever a headlight touches it. Inside each tulip: 

slender black stamens, exclamations emerging 

only after several days in the vase. 

Tenderness in the declarative.

It will reveal itself. There’s nothing else 

you can do. You must stand 

in the water, waiting.