the eaters of flowers
Texas Poet Laureate 2023 ire’ne lara silva presents six poems
Dew.Deux. Colleyville, Texas. Photo: DeeAshley
POET’S NOTE
I grew up Catholic, and we went to mass as a family most Sundays. But when my mother prayed, she went to the grotto at San Juditas Tadeo in Pharr, TX. She'd always take a gift of a living plant for the garden, and we'd pray under the broad open sky with the sun shining on our heads and among living green things that breathed. I was taught that faith was to help us survive difficult things. Life has taught me faith is for never surrendering, for learning to open one's heart, and most recently, to express daily gratitude.
–ire’ne lara silva, San Antonio, 2024
2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant Recipient
2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction
2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant
From the eaters of flowers (Saddle Road Press, 2024), by ire’ne lara silva.
Reprinted with permission of Saddle Road Press. All images curated by HTI Open Plaza.
in my heart
in my heart no circus
in my heart no cages
in my heart no stampeding animals
in my heart no whirlpools
in my heart no quicksand
in my heart no raging fires
in my heart no guilt
in my heart no shame
in my heart no chaos
in my heart no bitterness
in my heart nothing left unsaid
in my heart tawny fields of tall grass
in my heart drifting clouds
in my heart flowering vines
in my heart mesquites and huizaches
in my heart sycamores and cedars
in my heart every small and humble green
in my heart blooming ocotillos and crowns of thorns
in my heart the peaceful lapping of the wide river
in my heart the light of his eyes that will never leave me
in my heart a thousand thousand conversations
in my heart the hand i held even after it went cold
my friend said, you see, hardly anyone knows what peaceful grief looks like
Cholla Cactus Skeleton. Photo: mistakeablyme
i know they mean well when they say my brother is still with me
but i hope he isn’t in his last days he was forgetting where he was
and my name and his own name he was forgetting all of it and he
knew only enough to trust my voice and my hand holding his hand
and that he wasn’t alone and that i would take care of anything he
needed i hope he’s walked on to the next world without any
memory of this one hope he’s forgotten all the pain all the anger i
hope he’s forgotten his childhood and my father forgotten bullies
and homophobes forgotten bruises and broken hearts forgotten
despair and hurt i hope he’s forgotten doctors and painkillers and
surgeries and hospitals and wounds and pain oh i hope i hope he’s
forgotten pain
even if it means he’s forgotten me even if our
difficult years and our beautiful years live only in my heart even if
he doesn’t remember all our adventures all our tears all our laughter
even if he doesn’t remember our years of colors and words and
music and flowers because even when he didn’t know my name he
still smiled at me and looked so kindly upon me and i couldn’t have
prayed for anything more at his peaceful moment of passing i hope
he remembers nothing even if it means i send all this love that still
lives in me out in no particular direction
in the first rain afterwards
i saw him in the white rain lilies sprouting roadside saw him in the
greening of the revived blades of grass saw him when the leaves
started to change color and i saw him when the crimson crown of
thorns started blooming may his spirit be racing in delight from one
streak of lightning to another may it be curled in comfort in the
petals of roses and peonies may it be watching in wide eyed delight
as the dew forms each morning may his spirit be drifting in the soft
clouds overhead may it be visiting the snow covered chollas
blooming a soft yellow may his spirit be running with the howling
of the coyotes i heard tonight and last night and the night before
Prosopis torquata: The tangled beans of the mesquite known as Tintitaco. Photo: Dick Culbert
Lot K32
it’s roughly 3 feet by 7 feet
there are no lines to separate
one lot from another
wild grass wildflowers
a few small stones
spillover of red brown mulch
from the lot next to it
it’s quiet here
the traffic is a far off sound
even though the road isn’t far
it’s all the trees mostly oaks
pecans cottonwoods cedars
it doesn’t seem to matter
what time of the year it is
there are always flitting butterflies
birds darting from place to place
and green leaves on the trees
as well as golden leaves fluttering down
my brother is buried in Lot K31
we bought both plots at the same time
i didn’t know his would be vacant
for such a very short time
i wonder if he knew different
wonder if he held on to make sure
i had a signed contract in hand
he was buried the way he wanted
on a wooden pallet
wrapped in a cotton shroud
surrounded with flowers
from head to foot
a bouquet laid over his chest
no coffin no concrete no embalming
no separation from the earth
before the year is out
it’ll be five months since he was buried
i don’t think it’s my imagination
but the burial mound seems to be
as high as it ever was
the only thing that’s different
is the permanent flat stone
that bears his name
and the dates of his life
and my name for him
when i visit i take
a little stepladder to sit on
i unfold it over Lot K32
because it seems disrespectful
to sit elsewhere and possibly
intrude on someone else’s grave
at least here i know it’s vacant
and i hope to leave it vacant
for at least another three decades
letting the leaves flutter down
and the wild grass grow
i took care of him
for all but seven years of his life
in the afterlife there will be
no need to look after each other
his spirit in the unfurling
of all green things and the dew
is free of all pain and memory
and mine will return to the wind
as free as it ever dreamed of being
but here beneath this earth
we will never leave each other
we will be siblings of the soil
Mesquite Seed Pods. Photo: National Parks Gallery
silence is the breath between songs
singing is inviting all the ghosts all of my dead to sing and in my voice
their voice and in my voice all the songs i have loved and all the times my
heart thrilled and sank and soared and in my voice all the voices that have
or ever will sing with me in the singing all my lost loves all my broken
hearts all the far flung shattered pieces of my soul all the sharp edges lined
in red all the times i wept and all the times i laughed and all the times i
prayed and all the times i gave thanks in the singing everything i have
ever held precious and all the times i fought and everything i kept quiet
and everything i didn’t and in the singing never one voice in the singing
all the voices i have ever sung with all the voices that have sung with me
and in the singing there is no time no differentiation of then or now or
future no differentiation of here or there or living or dead in the singing
neither love nor heartbreak ever forget themselves and a single phrase
lingers through decades never diminishing in the singing voices that braid
themselves through a life and i will hear singing on my last day even if i
am silent
Ocotillo. Watercolor by Mary Vaux Walcott, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo: Lea Christiano
the eaters of flowers
born soft born to unfurl
we could be gentle as flowers
hurting no one
making only beauty
we could be
entire languages of love
speaking tenderly
humming and illuminated
we could be
like the great beasts
that move across the
plains as if they were the skies
eaters of fruit and
eaters of seed and eaters of leaves
eaters of rain and
eaters of light and eaters of earth
but we are rarely gentle
rarely soft rarely tender rarely peaceful
that cannot be blamed solely
on our being devoted eaters of flesh
even as predators
we are eaters of flowers
we are eaters of time
eaters of memory eaters of beauty
eaters of what
was and what is to come
eaters of living
and eaters of dying
even as the living
and the dying devour us
is it possible to be truly gentle
before we have accepted we will die
and what is it to accept
that we are as delicate as the flowers
that our blooms are brief
that we are vulnerable to everything
too much not enough sun
too much not enough water
too much wind too
much touch too much pressure
that everything marks us
as if we too were petals with burnt edges
easier to dismiss the flowers
like we dismiss all the dead all the dying
easier to say each one isn’t
precious after all they’re everywhere
what would it mean to
pause each time we saw a flower and breathe
to take in the moment
that doesn’t repeat and the light the scent
what would it mean to
think of each other as flowers
if every time we touched
we touched with fingers like petals
if every time we spoke
we spoke as if our mouths were flowers
our words a spill
of color our breath a spill of beauty
all my life i have been
thorn and root and wide strong stem
but it is time now for a different life
in the time that remains
to become an eater of flowers
to become flower
to pay attention as i never knew
how before
to watch how they drink in the sun
to watch the light in them
to listen to their gladness
in the morning sun
like them to turn my face
towards light and dew
to breathe without rushing to
bloom in the time i have
to accept to accept to accept
and one day fall
Photo: Eugene Golovesov
descanso
i notice them everywhere i go. i always have. today on the same street i
saw three of them. different sizes. one not much more than a cross with
plastic red and white roses. one covered in blue flowers and a wooden slat
with a name and a date. and one with only slightly sun-faded star-and
heart-shaped balloons. four bouquets of plastic flowers. mardi gras beads.
a sunshine yellow cross with blessed written in turquoise paint.
when i see them i don’t cross myself like i do when i pass by cemetaries
and graveyard. i don’t know what to call that fractional moment of
acknowledgment which is me all at once crossing myself and sending a
prayer and thinking of the deceased and thinking of the mourners and a
small salutation to Death Herself. but all of that happens in a flash which
is neither sad nor afraid but is real.
i think of how it makes sense to mark the place of loss with flowers and
balloons and bright colors. how that sends a continuous burst of love to
their lost one. how it must be a way to begin to heal the rip of sudden
death. perhaps a painful death. and how acknowledging the loss hurts less
than passing by that place and seeing nothing to mark where it happened.
what i have discovered in these months of loss is that the descanso for his
loss is not necessarily where his body rests now. it’s not even the place
where he left this life. it doesn’t matter where iam or where i go. i carry
his descanso with me. everywhere i go. i carry it in my chest. here in my
chest where his leaving left a hole so big there was hardly enough flesh to
keep me together.
here in my chest is where i bring all the flowers. where i leave all the
brightly ribboned memories. all the silver medallitas of all the things that
meant so much to us both. where i carry all his favorite things. and where i
put all the things he would have loved that he will never see or know or
taste. here is where i will carry all the balloons lighter than air and heavier
than grief.
i am the descanso.
