Solicitude

    by Luke Evans

She draws the shades across her eyes

to keep her sunshine in,

considers dandelions, how

they close their eyes to night,

how their yellow

spatters the space between the rails.

She is never forgetting her mother's lips,

red as her eyes in those final days,

                                   with little deathly dandelions

                                   splotched across her skin.

There is a pond, here,

huddled under bowing branches,

tepid, green. No sky breaks forth, only

sandpapered ceilings for another sand-castled day,

tucked safely in its little box

served on a tray. Her mother used to say

                        -- she once had said --

how a moth will find its true light,

if in its clattering it dies for the one

                                 yellowing the color from our skin.

                       She sits now,

peels the skin from the ground,

lays the moss across her lap,

                     listening

to frogs babble

and understanding nothing.

© 2011 Luke Evans

Luke Evans specializes in water and words, sometimes confusing the two.  They do not make good bedfellows.  He has written many stories and poems, some of which can be found at Autumn Sky Poetry, TQRstories, Etchings, and The Externalist.  Do not confuse them as his creations.  He is merely a witness, indicting the beauty of the world and all those in it.