I guess black people can write about flowers at a time like this since every poem turns on itself. Starts one way to
end another. We see it in nature, too. How seed turns to leaf regardless of its earth or my rambling thoughts
blossom into a hyacinth with as sweet a scent. I dream of Mamie Till often. She walks the church aisle toward her
son’s body while wisteria bloats the casket’s brim and papered bougainvillea bracts emerge from where his eye
once was. An entire garden from the nutrients of the body’s soil. And not to mention all those awed birds circling
Emmett’s pillowed corpse. So many in the tabernacle. Not harbingers of his God’s descent, not refugees fleeing his
body exilic but ecstasy’s plump arrows. We, living, have it all wrong. When eternity’s concerned, sparrows don’t
take leave. They fly into you.