Streptocarpus

though you sound like a plague
here you are on my table
to the right of my laptop,
several of your velvet leaves
tucked behind its raised screen,
your five-petal adornments
arriving at my eyes from amongst fronds
of those velvet leaves whose soft smooth
surfaces by touch belie their look of pebbled sheen,
small adornments arriving at my eyes
in purple frequencies, the color of rest and
repose, couched in abundant green
each leaf’s delicate etched vein extending
from the interstate artery of its graceful spine,
direct highway from root, which brings
the stuff of life even to outskirt cells
at the edges of leaves as if to remote villages
on the shores of an ocean of air

Jim Culleny, ©6/10/23