Tangential

by Irene O’Garden

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It overwhelms, this daily
silhouetted beauty: paper-cut

delicacy. Paper-cut pain,
too–acute, specific yet tangential

to swaying candy-floss phlox;
tangential to the fat-leaved,

child’s-idea-of-a-tree catalpa
who blooms June panicles

of speckled orchids; tangential
to the daylily’s friendly orange

swat: saying, like an aunt,
how much you’ve grown.