Orchid

My father said I could not do it,
but all day I plucked the peonies.
The lake was still, the canals ran steadily.

I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden.
How many ladders to gather a bouquet of roses?

I had only one and a long patience with lit hands
and the looking of the sun which moved right through me
the way the water moved through like a thestrial's voice
that seemed to speak of a sunlit gathering
of those who had gathered before me

I put the peony in the pond’s cold water,
all day twisting flower roots as if I were entering a thousand doors,
all day my back a straight road to the sky.
An open channel to my inner thoughts

And then out of its own goodness, out
of the far fields the night came,
and inside me was the stillness a gong possesses
just after it has been rung

Today
The light came over the lake
The feathered thestrians were silver and then were not,
and was—I could see as I laid
the last petal in the water—full of eyes and fish