C. Henry Smith | Beautiful Come Back

My mom cottons to possibility, remains—
in a hothouse age—insistent
we practice faith. In America’s
middle, reads herself
to sleep, texts
hope, because,
what else?

I reply that I look forward
to poeting extinction:
four horsemen bouquets,
all the bright tastes of
collapse. She doesn’t text back.

I text: pictures of our prairie centuries younger,
the grasses, lost
grasses, the bottlebrush
and grama, sprangletop,
pink muhly, how the earth looks
when it breathes, the deer-tongue,
nimblewill, timothy, sweet
timothy, and brome. How the earth looks
when it dreams. Quilted
landscape where I could sleep,
will sleep, someday, forever,
where Mom says, You can still hear
the waves, says, it will be so beautiful
come back.

It is April, and she’s still waiting for rain.
Reads in the plain break our falter,
in the sedge seed and bud
the lush notion of a pasture post-sapien,
of rebirth, of a planet never gasping,
like my brother and I on our thinnest nights,
asthmatics elongating for inhalers,
he, vine-bound with breathing tubes,
and Mom reading to us in bed. That faith
in our home rock resting
easy in the belly of flowers,
in cycle and promise, unkillable
bulbine and its blossom,
its corn gold blossom,
is what my mom means by hope.

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C. Henry Smith is a poet from the high plains. He is the author of the chapbook Warren (Ghost City Press), and his work has appeared in Colorado Review, DMQ Review, Psaltery & Lyre, LIT, and others. He received his MFA at Oregon State University and is grateful for past residencies through Spring Creek Project and Chicago Art Department. @chenrysmith