portrait in words

Imaginary August
C.D. Wright

If one stood perfectly still. Even in the withering hours
of then. Hair down to here. Being alive and quiet.
One could forget oneself. Forget what one didn’t even recognize.
How mad it felt. Subliminally. One could pick out goldfinches
and mourning cloaks among the dying stalks of cosmos,
and across the ditch of gray wastewater they use to irrigate
the burial ground, a young man in a late-flowering tree
taking our photograph.

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