Grace
When winter was as old as grandmother—
with her silver hair branches and silver skin fields,
pleased to live forever—I bought ten yellow tulips.
I rested their stems on my forearm, their
silken glowing faces on my elbow like a newborn
as I walked through a dusty violet sky.
Strangers smiled, surprised to see the burst of bright.
The moon dangled its sliver,
the air whispered its shiver,
and the flowers were a sleeping child.