The Pink Hibiscus.

In the space of a single psalm David's
emotional pendulum would often swing all the way
from lament to celebration. Was it an act of faith?
A surge of optimism? For myself, the oscillation
moves too often from doubt to faith and
back again; it's the stretch, the wide arc from soar
to swoop that disconcerts. Sometimes it seems
as if equilibrium comes only from
letting myself go numb. Then the distress
of melancholia fades into a fugitive dream,
along with old happinesses, spurts of elation-
they all dim into an echoing, indeterminate past.
Waiting for the nerves to tingle into life again.

And more of the same, even here on a
tropical vacatoin. But right now a flushed hibiscus,
inviting a bee to its pink lip, its swollen stamen
angling up at me, wakens my eye to ardent color,
and the possibility of, once again, passion.

-Luci Shaw