Flower Children

What happened to you,
who refused to tiptoe
through the wax museum
and the rose bush fields
with burs hanging by every bud,
abandoning juice can curlers
and skirts tiered below the knee?

You destroyed the status quo
with posies and rhythms,
with careening kisses
parted by the falling flames
like velvety folds of the closing curtain,
constantly shipped off to one place
or another to die or give birth.

Did you retreat for the next wave to hit?
Or are you sitting in a
three-bedroom house in Boise,
aging backwards
amongst cracked plaster
and hammered copper wall hangings,
rewording your own epitaphs
like you have nothing left
to say until posterity?

How can you retire your own revolution?
How can you ransom your own child
and leave us with nothing
to look forward to but ugly babies
and booming reports of thunder
ricocheting off our own crumbling walls,
while we watch
with failing eyes?