The Tulip-Flame

My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane

that winds around the hill, and a wide field

of tulips with a centered tulip-flame.

She rolls her brush through gray and adds the rain

in tiny flicks, glinting arrows of cold.

My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane.

Last year our mother died, as was her plan.

It’s simpler to imagine something could

have intervened. The centered tulip-flame

startles the scene; the surrounding ones are plain

pastels, while this one’s lit with a crimson fold.

My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane

of cobblestones, a watery terrain

of dripping flowers. Her strokes, elsewhere controlled,

flare out and fray around the tulip-flame

as if it were an accident, a stain,

a blaze in the mid-point of a wet field.

My sister’s painting this: a hill, a lane,

a tulip field, and one astounding flame.

“The Tulip-Flame” first appeared in Shenandoah, Vol. 58, No. 3, Winter 2008, and is from The Tulip-Flame (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014).