Unicorn

From this distance, the gardens bloom
like so many accomplices to history.
So much writing, stenciled in summer
colors— white and hibiscus, the poppies’
red hearts correctly dotted with black.
No one could miss such perfection,
all the straight plots laid out in a true-
type font, proceeding virginal and slim.
Creamy cabbage roses drowse in the heat,
flushed but studious and so
doomed in their avoidance of risk.

But it’s summer. The air should be,
as it begins to be, suffused with lavender.
Tender with scent and the spirit of my own
longings, their stems call out to be crushed
and taken. I would set my hand to roam
the grass, sniff the ground to read the fierce
turns in the ravine, follow them all the way
to the jagged coastline and that strip of earth
dissolving as watery tissue.

Against firelit fields, branches of larch
and pine embrace— generous as narrative,
intricate as a Flemish tapestry. When
you step into view, something trembles
loose from my bones and I become more
than flesh, invisible to all but you.