Elegies for Everything
For Ellen Luhman
Aphelion’s airs’ wild instruments, the teneral meadowhawk dragonfly’s gold jaws, the multilingual waves, the short life of forsythia beast topiaries, July’s cordite scented night air, elegies for the young girls sitting outside the Happy Nail Salon with cotton spacers between their freshly coral polished toes, Gods’ small and big eyes, and goldfinches riding bee balm and echinacea, for Linda on her early morning porch in her lavender bathrobe watering lavender pansies, the kissing amber-glassed bear salt and pepper shakers, diurnal rains, angel-soled shoes from Poland, the body sometimes, July’s chicory dizzy pinwheels’, crazy moon spins, wild carrots’ lace flowers, elegies for names yelled from waves in summer winds, for songs that changed your life coming from passing cars’ windows, for the shrinking moon, & the scarlet tanager’s wings that look like dry muddled leaves sewn to its red garment.
—Susan Firer, Whitefish Bay
