Floating Hearts
R.M. Ryan
I’ve got this rented Lumina
partway into the woods
and my plant identification book
beside me, along with my
yellow notebook.
I’m going into nature,
starting with just the “white
simple-shaped flowers”
on page 36. There’s
Bloodroot and Rue Anemone,
False Rue Anemone and Swamp Dewberry,
False Violet and Star Flower
and, if I get to water,
there’ll be Floating Hearts.
Outside the Lumina
is this air filled
with black flies and humidity
and the smell of loam.
The book mentions none of this—
not a word about how
the soil looks braided here,
in the far north, as if the world
is held together
by this embroidery of roots
and I’ve read that entire counties
are really one organism—
a mushroom, I think—a fungus
reaching into everything.
One time I bought this box
of dried blood meal home
to feed my garden.
According to the label
this “natural product” is
12% nitrogen, which is
the “most important element
for proper plant growth and greenness.”
I guess we always knew
it was the death
of animals that made the earth so green.
A meal of blood—the language exact
for once, yet when I sniffed the box
with its stale, flat smell
of old blood,
I could also smell
the scent of children’s breath
and I recalled the taste
of lovers’ long last kisses
in the dark before
the night is done.
Breath and blood
nitrogen and green
Tammy Smith and me
kissing in the grass beside
the car, the afternoon
of the solar eclipse
when these slivers
of sunlight, like crescent moons,
were scattered in the shadows
as if the world were wearing
the robes of sorcerers
and that night
when I was in and out
of her and the heavens
were out of reach
as they usually are
and now I remember this
my mouth dry with the memory—
dry with that stale, flat taste
and I stand up with it all
and walk around my study
thinking about the Lumina
and Tammy Smith
this wild embrace
of one thing with another,
me finally at the edge
of the pond—hot,
bloody with fly bites,
I’m seeing the simple flower at last—
the Floating Heart
feasting on
its dense
entanglements.
