Dried Flowers

by S. I. Brubaker

And if my words are just dried flowers tucked away in books:
Silly sentimental things that can’t assuage the pain
But make it ache the more: oh then I dare not look,
I dare not make the words, and dare not range them on the page.

A living, breathing thing should be a tale,
A world must spin or sing through space; people must breathe
And speak and spit and scoff and weep. I fail
A thousand times a day. I scribble and seeth,

And words that kill and birth, make breezes sway
A world of men awaken and obey,
Breathe dawn into the void and make it day.
I will never, never know the way.
May these dried flowers live and have their say.

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A poet, lover of trees, and splasher-in-creeks, S. I. Brubaker has a deep love of story and word, mythos and logos. She heads the Kingfisher Quarterly, which she founded with a mission to publish excellent poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by aspiring young writers, work that serves as a signpost pointing further in and further up. She lives in a little hollow in the farmland of Pennsylvania through which a creek flows and occasional small dust devils make life interesting.