On Picking a Spotted Touch-Me-Not

This orange-speckled cup  
with alternating leaves, 
yellow petals shining 
in the late-summer light, 
floods my field of vision 
and reminds me of my wife, 
of all the trouble of ten years, 
of my cousin sitting hatted  
and hooded in Cape Cod sand 
explaining her preferred sleeping 
arrangements, of the gannet’s bath 
welling and minute crabs slinking 
sideways underfoot as small 
children gape, scrambling 
to beat the incoming tide 
in canals crumbling amid foaming 
swirls of seastream. And the sandstone 
coils around our hearts with quartzite 
props polished with careful footfalls. 
My nephew lashes the air for a butterfly 
billowing like a lamb made of light itself, 
no regard for safety or our plans. 
And my son cries in the forest up ahead 
angling a bluff path, my nerves 
like Achilles and Priam sitting 
in their hut by the sea, lapped 
by waves of sorrow and release.