Assay

Blanka, "Lavender and Bee"

Lavender proves out, branching between limestone in a
vein of silver leaflets and acanthite colored buds, waiting
for bees to refine it. Sunlight on a bent stem where some
traveler brushed by: I muddle a leaf between my thumbs
and breathe in. Herbaceous, alloyed with caliche, the coin
of scent I’ll finger all morning on this overgrown path; not
a coin we’d place on the eyes of the beloved dead to keep
them from seeing, but the one we’d drop in a fountain to
pay for our wishes. That’s the coin I toss, spinning up and
out of my hands, through the air, past this poem, to you.