The Poinsettia
Winter ices windows
in an upstairs room
no one uses. A poinsettia
I’d forgotten glows
white in the dimness.
Ghosted with pale bracts,
it seems to be dying.
No, it’s flowering,
making an entryway
I can step through.
The poinsettia needs
darkness as I need
silence, isolation.
Blanched, pallid, it is
a clumsy, twisted body,
its stems like arms
and ill-formed hands.
I press my fingers
to a frosted window,
melt a silent handprint.
No one there in the outer
darkness. I often dream
of a secret room. Here
it is: white blooms, table
for work, hard chair.
in an upstairs room
no one uses. A poinsettia
I’d forgotten glows
white in the dimness.
Ghosted with pale bracts,
it seems to be dying.
No, it’s flowering,
making an entryway
I can step through.
The poinsettia needs
darkness as I need
silence, isolation.
Blanched, pallid, it is
a clumsy, twisted body,
its stems like arms
and ill-formed hands.
I press my fingers
to a frosted window,
melt a silent handprint.
No one there in the outer
darkness. I often dream
of a secret room. Here
it is: white blooms, table
for work, hard chair.
Bio
Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.