Stay, I said
to the cut flowers.
They bowed
their heads lower.
Stay, I said to the spider,
who fled.
Stay, leaf.
It reddened,
embarrassed for me and itself.
Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.
Stay, to the earth
of riverine valley meadows,
of fossiled escarpments,
of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back
with a changing expression, in silence.
Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answered,
Always.
2011
Shorty
Contemporary
2022
2023
Love & Relationships
Nature
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Dialogue
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Repetition
a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”