"We could flourish"

We could flourish with feathers,
but the toasted blooms of summer
marigolds, you will continue to confuse
and call daffodils, which, injured, indignant,
radiant, will turn from you. In the wind,
all we are made equal. The heat
shall be stripped from our skins
and limbs, and we could wish
for differences to come in, set us
apart, get our coats like gentlemen
courting ladies
in ancient copper-plate etchings,
like badges of distinction, like bugs,
pinned to cork and long since bored
to death at educating the ten-year old sadist
whose eye was caught, whose hands gently,
lovingly, carefully, caught and who
has long since grown full of himself
and left, while you stand here
out of the sun, chilled to the skin
and wishing for wings - not to fly,
but to fold you in.