CHARLENE LANGFUR

The Language of the Heart

I find no answers without it. I keep loving whether it is returned

or not, plant seeds so deep they are sure to root long,

rooted as is, organic, toe to the land, roots down, old

ideas spreading out like the sycamore’s in the back field,

yes, like that, full of small birds in it stopping for the moment,

wrens maybe before the crows come to settle in,

black and wild with all their talk, and then there is the land

that soothes the heart, its sunflowers and roses, off white and healthy,

roses love the desert, they always remind me of more, sometimes

I have them to give away or some times to receive as a gift, whatever

it is in the end, today I throw the petals off the porch

when they are fallen off the stems, petals, notions of safety

and balance, taking off in the wind, an idea of happiness

gone with them, what opens up into a world, what rises

out of less, earth unfolding, what is gone, what begins again

Charlene Langfur is an organic gardener, a southern Californian, a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Stone Canoe, Literal Latte, The Hampden Sydney Poetry Review. Currently, her work is featured in Spoon River Poetry Anthology, Earth’s Daughters, The Buddhist Poetry Review, and is forthcoming in Poetry East and Weber—The Contemporary West.