*After reading Mary Oliver’s "Roses" from her 2015 collection, Felicity*

I Woke Up

by Joan Myles

I woke up last night needing something.

My fingers and toes tingled

and I thought “I need to be sleeping.”

A dull haze of dreaming

nudged me ever out of myself

even as I kept insisting-

“I need to rest.

Need the words to step back a bit,

to quiet their humming if they must crowd my pillow.”

Later, in the midst of writing,

I still needed something

and declared “I need a storm.”

Outside the wind strained to move,

creaked through the fence, stumbled

over garden stones.

“Come on,” I urged from the open window,

“whip the clous into froth

and rattle the bones of houses.”

Here at my desk, consciousness

shines through your soft laughter: “…we are

just now entirely busy being roses."