Cotton Flower

 

In Thailand it's called the cotton flower tree,
more like a wild bush really, definitely not true
cotton, but t has the most beautiful leaves
like coleus, except thinner reaching upward,
every leaf a new limb on an ever-expanding
self-illuminating Christmas tree accompanied
by single-stalk mini-versions surrounding it
like a squatter family taking over the back
yard until finally the rainy season is over and
I realize why it's called the cotton flower tree,
each limb extruding a tuft of fluff like the tip
of a drum major's baton and all the things I
should've said way back then way down there,
a painter's brush dipped in opaque oils of
the most ethereal color that redefines magenta
as more than the subtractive opposite of green,
a mixture of the spectrum's two extremes, the
homeless color, just like me, with no place of its own
until here and now, the subtractive opposite of Italy.

 

— Hardie Karges

 

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