I still long for the spring hunt of dahlias safe harbored for wintering down in Andy's cellar

hanging like pirates from rope strung on the beams, wrapped in canvas that smelled of good rotted manure and

the peat moss that fluffed up the soil into clouds for their petulant tubers, rounded like breasts of a woman and penises pointed and sturdy of men

but the ten years gone by since we shared the parenting of the bright plate-sized blooms and covered the field with dozens of bedsheets, like a gypsy encampment when November touched earth leaving white frosty prints of its fingers

and when Andy went away forever and that Spring I'd forgotten, or maybe unwilling, left them to dry in the dark