White Lilacs

The white lilac has a hundred ghostly fingers.
It points at the first stars.
It points at me
standing in a May twilight
with barbed wire hooking the darkness where
barbs of stars bloom astonishingly.
The cones of the white lilac
shake in a dark wind from the south.
Fragrance rattles
into air, odor of sweet
bones, night-mouths.

All night the lilacs will shudder here
at the edge of the meadow while
stars dazzle the sky's bush.
That black bush of menace.

A ghost
walks over my grave as my flesh rises.
The roots of the lilacs
strive through my skull discovering the holes
I gaze out of. Existence
is terrible. The white lilacs
tremble as I tremble
departing into themselves,
into their clusters of oneness,
refusing to be a symbol,
admitting nothing.

from Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve by Joan Colby
Alembic Press