Void and Compensation (The Little Flower I Call Kurtz)

So you’re related to the iris, in and of its family
that responds to light and gives us, fuzzed and drunk,
the general shapes of things in outline and form,
before the brain, perhaps fuzzed, perhaps drunk
or sad or ecstatic even if undecided and directionless,
a chance to talk to whatever shapes and lights come its way.
The head talks to the world and sends ideas back to the eye,
which keeps talking. It won’t shut up until someone says
Bed, and that must mean it’s time to sleep. Things
heat up if your eyes are open and shut, a case
of pronouns when the I manufactures second and third persons.
Sigh. I was thinking about spring when the nor’easter rolled in
with winds to chip and grate the clouds to snow,
and the showy and solitary sprigs that buoy midwinter,
any and all rogue blues that rise when freezing flags,
now lobby-bound are waiting for their larger power.
The sun can’t think yet reasons us perennial—
gives us shorter, colder days, a subjunctive spring
until remembering what ifs the flowers—
the gray purples of a dying day with night coming on
and no plans but to go home and tidy up,
unpack the day bag, its weave like burlap,
loose enough yet capable of keeping things together.
Reddish purple. The way I remember saffron
or my heart when I cartoon it in my head.
Hard job, small bulb, illuminating up and out of dirt,
pointless, ill-paid, and necessary.
Crocus. The little flower I call Kurtz.
Of petals it’s none-too-soon to snow in your past tense.
This is so it can be said of seers
that they have seen the colors of this world
and know the world as colorless,
as dirt waiting for us and to happen.

Michael Morse