Beauty (My Plain Idea) by Lee Herrick
Is the dirt you shake from the root— not the part closest to heaven (the petal),
not even the aphids having their way. Beauty is forgetting how
the root hangs on but the dirt lets go.
Tonight, I dream about water: drowning in it, floating on it, the particles we cannot see:
all the body's water keeping us alive, the ghosts in every room.
Tonight, I weigh their echoes. I wonder if good fortune means a bird
who remembers you, a ghost in the room approving the lines you write, how your birth was a death
nearly delivered, how you recover and become a believer. The blooming flowers around
you have all the answers. Be quiet. You should
hear them aspiring under this very floor.
— This Many Miles from Desire by Lee Herrick (Page 46)
