– Bonaventure’s Brief Benediction –
Once a year, as if memory flushed the vein of time,
the dead in Bonaventure awaken,
not in form, but in color.
Not ghosts, but gardens.
Not moans, but magenta.
A hundred acres ignite with azaleas,
flames unsanctioned by altar or stone,
spilling their irreverent gospel
across the aisles of sleeping names.
Petals unlace the corset of silence;
salmon and scarlet erupt from earth’s dreaming mouth,
a florid rebellion against ash and epitaph.
The obelisks blush.
The moss forgets to mourn.
And the path,
that shell-strewn, whispering vein,
melts again into the sacrament of light.
Butterflies draft their own liturgy, sparse and precise,
each wingbeat a hymn too soft for marble.
The air: equal parts nectar and elegy,
sour-sweet like memory fermenting.
For a moment, eternity rehearses its resurrection,
not of flesh, but of fragrance.
Not of form, but of flame.
And when the blossoms fall,
a silent exodus,
color returning to the root,
Bonaventure exhales,
folds her veils,
and slips once more into her sacred drowse.
