Phillip Terman: My Blossoming Everything

for Ganya

It is robins’ eggs on the just out-of-reach branch.
It is red raspberries in a circular thicket of thorns.
Who are you, my beloved? My sweetness,
My swallowtail, my infinite youth?
My pine shadow in the tall grass?
My other self, unreachable, my untrappable hummingbird,
My synagogue empty of all but God, my scripture
upon which I write my illegible inheritance,
My last night’s dream that woke me in confusion,
My wings removed in my mother’s womb,
My knowledge emptying with my age, my words
The silence will send out to the silence,
My light I cup in my hands and splash on my face,
My Jupiter newly risen like my heart?

Copyright 2024 Phillip Terman. First published in North American Review. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Phillip Terman’s many books include This Crazy Devotion (Broadstone Books, 2020) and My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024). He lives in Grove City, Pennsylvania.