Cactus Seed

By Lola Ridge

Radiant notes piercing my narrow-chested room, beating down through my ceiling - smeared with unshapen belly-prints of dreams drifted out of old smokes - trillions of icily peltering notes out of just one canary, all grown to song as a plant to its stalk, from too long craning at a sky-light and a square of second-hand blue. Silvery-strident throat - so assiduously serenading my brain, flinching under the glittering hail of your notes - were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall... I might fathom your golden delirium with throttle of finger and thumb shutting valve of bright song. II But if... away off... on a fork of grassed earth socketing an inlet reach of blue water... if canaries (do they sing out of cages?) flung such luminous notes, they would sink in the spirit... lie germinal... housed in the soul as a seed in the earth... to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles on the mouth. Or glancing off buoyantly, radiate notes in one key with the sparkle of rain-drops on the petal of a cactus flower focusing the just-out sun. Cactus... why cactus? God... God... somewhere... away off... cactus flowers, star-yellow ray out of spiked green, and empties of sky roll you over and over like a mother her baby in long grass. And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees, pricking multiple leaves at his amazing story.