My vertical cowboy

They’ve continued to join this
landscape of art and revival
but sadly I slept through yours
having overindulged in cheap
wine and debauchery and the
suns of the lesser gods who led
me to bypass your scarlet soliloquy

your firework frills that now flash
dance the flower fields in their pink
panorama leaving the branch in
its home base of green, now that
your season’s eclipsed,

my dogwood, my cherry tree
my vertical cowboy

your descendants have come
but your blossoms still scatter
their afterthoughts.

where the weeds grow lonely

the comeback of calico
surreys down
indiscriminately, looping
the leaves to the sycamore

blues marry blondes in the
corresponding of colors
yellow belle annuals flower
up in the festival

and south of the symmetry
on the side road of secular
dwellers of dank anonymity

creviced and cracked, deep in
the psyche, this place where
the weeds grow the lonely.

Emalisa Rose is a poet, dollmaker, animal rescue volunteer. Living by a shore town has provided much of the inspiration that fuels her poetry and art. Her work has appeared in Poettree, Parrot Poems, and Echo.