Oneiromancy

The Feast of Flowers: A Floral Game of Fortune
Adams & Co, 1869

 

a flower appears in my dream

not nodding

they don’t always nod

and reminds me of Trisha, a florist,

who always told me—

branches in a field of moss behind her—

about arrangements, the structure of corsages,

and the languages no one speaks any more

 

the flower tells me

that humans speak the language of chemicals

but they aren’t very good at it, flowers though

it is their only way

a pause

but that’s not quite right

we use light in ways your eyes can’t see

and now the nod

 

… [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

James Engelhardt

James Engelhardt’s poems have appeared in the North American Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Terrain.org, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fourth River, and many others. His ecopoetry manifesto is “The Language Habitat,” and his book, Bone Willows, is available from Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. He lives in the South Carolina Upstate and is a lecturer in the English Department at Furman University.