Rue

After equally many years, I’m starting to worry
that I am missing the point of my life. Was I
meant to be the ovary of a green calyx always
getting fatter? How will I think when I die?

I worry there can be nothing worse than realizing
your life wasn’t what it was meant to be.

I am grateful to many herbalists and historians whose writing and scholarship helped on my ethnobotanical expeditions into the archives.

I could, but when I wanted to, you were nowhere to be found.

I could, but I like you better when I hardly recognize you this way.

I could, but I don’t even think I could.
I could, but I don’t think I will.

A Lee Bontecou Retrospective

he was a blossomed-out nerve of seeing
himself through the ugly eyes of how I had
come to see him and myself for letting
our lives get so Tupperware-fur-molded,

The hardest part
is calling that best friend from high school to make
a lunch date.

with an urgency
that made the young man working the desk
say, “Sir?” with some alarm