Night of Oblivion

Enigmatic purple on a plate of crumbled cloud, the dot at the center
of the wildflower Queen Anne’s lace is said to recall a drop
of Stuart blood pricked onto a doily the queen was at work on
when something distracted her from her purpose. History forgot

to document what broke the queen’s focus, but it seems to me
fairly obvious, having lived with it long enough, that memory
was the culprit. “You again,” she gasped, pivoting her face
forty-five degrees to appeal directly to the bright sun to prise

unwelcome remembrance from the countless fast raccoon hands of
her neurons. Strong sensation obliviates thought—thus
this preponderance of neighborhood leaf blowers, synecdochic
of much of Western culture. It takes so much loudness to remove

an oak leaf from a gutter. Native to Afghanistan, the wildflower
also answers to the name of wild carrot for no reason other than
that’s what it is—its spindly ivory taproot bred over centuries
into what’s become the most reliable source of true hot orange

in most our lives, with the exception of the sun as it sets, which Anne
took note of in the windows at Kensington Palace, waiting
for pure darkness, the garden only in outline, the ghost of her son
luminous in moonlight as a paper boat afloat on the still-round pond.