Beautiful


I want for an instant or two
to be beautiful, to say for one day
I lay with daisies and my hair
roiled their petals in that sunlit soup.

I want to walk on clouds, in the summer
of some girlšs dream to have wings,
in every feather a delicate abstraction
of color, a slight curl, a secret code,

and then to rise like orange ashes
threatening the carpet, to unfurl
like a fear she must face, to paint
in her brave eyes my finest picture.


Donald Zirilli
1998