JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

These butterfly-yellow flowers

grow low and delicate

on Sharon’s cliffs

 

All day they nod

as a smiling Mediterranean sun

conducts the orchestra

 

Breakers, cries of gulls

little children

frolicking on the shore

 

Then as Maestro Sol

descends his podium

and Mother Moon emerges

 

Puts on her lipstick

stealing some yellow

from the flowers

 

They fold their petals

into sleep and dream

of sipping milk and lullabies

 

Under the stars

until night’s interval is over

and the clamor of day resumes

 

Here in this fragment of a country

where milk honey and turmoil

live side by side

 

We close our petals

every night

and dream of peace