A Letter to the Flannel Flowers

Lyell bathes in the morning’s squeeze,
my knuckles rub the weathered plastic.
Northbound, a house that exists only in pictures.
The greenery drips of doubts down my neck,
beading off of my temples.
A second longer in my mother’s embrace,
a second less in my father’s.

Dear flannel flowers,
I’m sorry for the butterfingers my mother wiped on my father’s black shirt,
for the infection in his grandfather’s spine.
I’m sorry for the diamond in Wilson’s Glen,
for blood and tears on a Japanese hotel’s towel.
Most of all, I’m sorry for the wisteria of Tomah.

For I wasted my opportunity to see you,
and now I never will.