Substantial Fascinators
by Michael Lynch
That year we all wore flowers in our hair.
You, your plaited halo of daisies
and me, my gushing exitwound of ivy
ringing a suggestive central orchid.
The neighborhood kids were fay
spirits with dandelions tucked everywhere.
And old Joe nodded off on his front stoop
with a spiky crown of braided iris
suddenly princely in blue overalls.
You remember Matty and Murph shuffling
home from the bar and another day on the dig
swinging lunch coolers and with playful
sprays of wildflower blazing from their temples?
We saw finally, how pretty they were.
We were losing Blake again, but this time
in a fire of marigolds-head to shoulder
and everywhere. He lay right down in them
and we wept at his eyelashes
dusted like the kicking yellow stems of bees
and Ed Gallo, the butcher, curbscraped his dented Olds
his ears tufted with black-eyed susan and pussy
willow, his apron brown with the day's blood.
And sitting back under his father's grape arbor,
Carlo constantly adjusting his pin of daffodils
tipping longnecks with David who was alive
and had forgotten the leukemia and draped
his forehead with a soft wreath of orange
lilies and butterfly weed and smiled
there like a blond holy object. The flowers
are gone now, but I can still see Cicero,
who burned down his own house
and stabbed his brother for being gay,
with pink roses woven into his long mohawk
and know again that the villain is always just
a small child wanting love. Leary was there, clean
for once and not hanging from a motel
room clothes rod, and when I saw him pushing
white apple blossoms into his black curls,
I forgave him for everything. All that year
when I looked at you, I knew you loved me
and I saw you all daisy and baby's breath
and yellow tulle and couldn't bear the thought
that everything changes. We sat in the yard.
My father was lighting the grill, balding
and dripping with small carnations
and all of us were just so goddamned beautiful.
Michael Lynch lives just outside Boston. His poems have most recently appeared in Harvard Divinity Bulletin and In Posse Review.