Do Not Partake of the Abundance - Amy Spanel

On the bouquet - kept to myself-
 

didn’t read this aloud
 

DO NOT PARTAKE OF THE ABUNDANCE

my mother said through her rituals

of DON’T PICK THE FLOWERS.

Even now, I feel the pull in me

when picking the lusty blossoms from a laden bush.

Half in shade, half in sun, it welcomes me

to partake - fuzzy pink bells with cerebral aroma

for anyone - fragrant garnishings for a bouquet

I started from run-of-the-mill daisies - 

by the subway. Now, a few stops away

from the YA GOTTA GRAB IT WHILE YA CAN

‘CAUSE THERE WON’T BE ENOUGH - I see 

there is plenty. And this bouquet

happens to be for Etheridge --

 

[pg2] but of course I’d like to keep it for me--

yellow, white and pink variations of purity --

bridal suggestive or a muses’s breath --
 
I will hand it to Etheridge in the freshness

of a man getting flowers from a woman --

hopefully, this will not blow him away

on this breezy afternoon - people so used to

the vice-versa -- airily, Gwendolyn

Brooks said, ‘Oh, people send me flowers all the time!’

Standing in her office on her almost-last-day --

with The Library of Congress, I spied

several arrangements of carnations and baby’s breath.

The innocence, the purity, the persistence of the muse’s existence

 

[pg3] passing through my hands from those plucked

blossoms, that bouquet to Etheridge, into this

pen - and the laurel’s wreath of peace 

and wisdom is protecting the three of us 

with a halo made of flower-wreaths--

Gwendolyn is probably pushing 70; 

in his mid-50s, Eth survived heroin; 

and I am scared to death of fertility -- 

whose potential in me feels like cancer --
 
All of these inescapables about ourselves -- 

with death’s drawn-out-way of doing us in -- 

still do not take away the realness 

of these shasta daisies and bush-blossoms 

​

[pg4] tucked within a white sheet of paper 

rustling in their stable way with the wind.

This inner and dexterous blossoming of activity

is at least one thing girlish left in me.

May the muse continue to breathe its refuge 

for me with bush-blossoms, bouquets, 

and poets who have been oraclely where I am going

2:55 TUESDAY

May 13, 1986

3:35