A poem for Louise on her 30th birthday – Juillet 2025

A tale of tu- of sun dried -lips,
of vines and tied-up fingertips
grown up and over seasons lost,
planted fresh at paths now crossed
'tween bashful weeds and stubborn desire;
'tween hands that shook to clear the ire
of caustic balderdash smoke stacks
whose absence fills the rotten cracks
left in the wake of storm weight felt
deep in the folded, folded pelt
of her rumpled velvet rose—

—And now that flower with thorny throes,
fends fine in fields of matched ambrose.
Blue petals bound in Louisette stitches
rooted in the ground, sewn wishes
after thirty turns under sun that shines,
a glint within her well-watered eyes
toward two stems now inter-bound,
a four-leaf lover sought and found.