You find a long dried
bouquet of wild daisies
and asters, yellow daisies,
purple asters, the daisy
petals folded back
like a comet’s tail.
The aster petals are gone
and you pinch
the globe of seeds
and drop them into
an envelope never to
hold a check or love letter,
separating the seeds
between thumb and pointer
with the same gentle action
as pinching salt on a delicacy.
There is a barren hillside
and though it’s late
in autumn you say it’s not
too late, or at least they can
rest there until spring.
Peter Waldor is the author of Door to a Noisy Room (Alice James Books), The
Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing (Pinyon Publishing), Who Touches Everything
(Settlement House), which won the National Jewish Book Award, The
Unattended Harp (Settlement House), State of the Union (Kelsay Books)
and Gate Posts with No Gate (Shanti Arts). Waldor was the Poet Laureate of
San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared
in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the
Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and Mothering
Magazine. Waldor lives in Trout Lake, Colorado.