Jeremy Frost
Hibiscus
I open a window and a bouquet of early evening
drifts in,
the shrill screams of happy kids
faking fear as they run and coyly fall
on summer grass,
soft,
scented with the spice of a
hot July day like their warm,
brown-skinned mothers,
eyes soft and deep as the southern nights
they left. They sing the music of those faraway lands
in fat-voweled words,
all cadence and rhythm,
they dim their reds and greens
to the subtle shades of northern lights,
gather their children close in arms that smell of sun and flowers,
rich
like the earth they blossomed from.
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