"Bluebonnets"
By Gail Mazur
I lay down by the side of the road
in a meadow of bluebonnets, I broke
the unwritten law of Texas. My brother
was visiting, he'd been tired, afraid of
his tiredness as we'd driven toward Bremen,
so we stopped for the blue relatives
of lupine, we left the car on huge feet
we'd inherited from our lost father,
our Polish grandfather. Those flowers
were too beautiful to only look at;
we walked on them, stood in the middle
of them, threw ourselves down,
crushing them in their one opportunity
to thrive and bloom. We lay like angels
forgiven our misdeeds, transported
to azure fields, the only word for
the color eluded me -- delft, indigo,
sapphire, some heavenly word you might
speak to a sky. I led my terrestrial brother
there to make him smile, and this
is my only record of the event.
We took no pictures, we knew no camera
could fathom that blue. I brushed
the soft spikes, I fingered lightly
the delicate earthly petals, I thought,
This is what my hands do well
isn't it, touch things about to vanish.