| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
ONKOCHISHIN:
LEARNING A LESSON FROM THE PAST
Shelley Helms Fleishman
(Salty Dreams)
An Ikebana class:
the woman’s nun hair
cropped to her ears,
her hands floating and sure.
Her voice seemed apart from her,
as if it needed to be summoned
from the next room,
the words handed to her
like flowers.
The vase waiting,
water waiting to be filled,
when she began,
a sliver of skin showed
between her shirt and slacks,
showing her stem bent and smooth.
The movements like a dancer,
her poses like a bird, she worked,
her balance exceptional.
She reminds me --
Mrs. Batastini’s hands
were capable, with nails
just even with the tips of her fingers.
Her natural expression
was more serious,
but her unexpected smile
lit her eyes to honey.
She made me feel
my own careful potential,
that my bloom
was exotic.
We learned cirrus, cumulus. --
She moved like this,
as if praying.
The monk well known for this art,
he gathered the red lilies
from beside the rails,
the blooms burning
and unwelcome in everyone else’s hands.
Witness his vase, the bronze shoe,
Victorian and open to the toe,
holding the forbidden.
These women, this monk,
each one points back to another
like the feather in a woman’s hat.
Who holds the leaves just so.
Who names the cloud.
Who teaches how to see the sky.
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