Dear Heart of Sweet Perfume
By John McKnight

In the end I am flushed with warmth
with our feet in the sand, by the sea remembering why
you are beautiful, Dear.

You left me with white jasmine flowers
wafting through the air everywhere.
They surround my house like a cloud and I see them
on every tile and inch of carpet, drifting through the air
behind me, as if to follow me
everywhere and spread like liquid across every street I cross
and into the classrooms of young, scatter-minded angels.

I see them in Tagudin, raining on small brown children
swimming in the muddied waters, leaving their fragrance
everywhere, and when i touch the scent,
it reminds me of you.
The children remind me of you,
because they are angels like you.
Angels collecting tattered European books from the Protestant schools.
Angels playing in the clear by the dike. Angels
carrying baskets of duck eggs to the carribou. Angels
wearing their pink backpacks and grey backpacks and black backpacks and
rainbow backpacks. Angels by the sand. Angels exasperated
and depressed and sleepy walking circles round the town
with sleet dropping on their heads.

Grasp the weight of it all, Dear, the weight that you have given me,
that reminds me that I exist, that we exist in the specks of
jasmine pollen. We exist as angels among angels, and we never die,
no angel dies because nothing can die amongst love,
only live, in fear and dreams and ignorance and
beautiful and infinite wonder,
and in sand and saltwater
in the grass under the peach tree, under snowflake skies,
and third-story classrooms and
in our dearest, longest dreams, we live until finally
on beds of thousands of white
jasmine flower petals,
we rest.

© John McKnight

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