By Dennis Cummings
We walked through hours of boredom
that summer in the dry creek bed
that sometimes ran in winter.
On the bank were clustered strands
of a bright orange parasite
that we called witches’ grass.
And on river stones near the low bluff
we found a dead dog,
the flies still circling.
How was I to know
that four decades later
I’d lift you from the living room floor,
my arms lowering you to your wheelchair,
your body light as a dragonfly?
Our eyes drew near
as when we were children playing,
and I could see marks on your skin
budding like bougainvillea
climbing the trellis of your spine,
spreading out like witches’ grass.
Dennis Cummings lives in Poway, CA. He has lived in San Diego County all his life and has worked with flower growers there for more than four decades. He studied creative writing at San Diego State for a while during the early seventies. His poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Dunes Review, and Barnstorm.