Wild Flowers by SHIRLEY KAUFMAN

After everything I’ve forgotten, now on the other side of the world I hid in as a child, it’s the same sun running down my back, the same tick of insects in the moist air. When I stare into the tiny radiant pupil of this blue-violet one and you say eye of the madonna --the whole field stares back in a golden nimbus, leaves shine and the sweet quattrocento faces I never prayed to. There are daisies bunched in the grass, red poppies, all the old flowers I sang to, made chains from, or sucked the milk out of, shaggy and tender and on the verge. And I’m down on my knees in the clover where nothing has changed or slipped through our fingers, still looking for luck. From “Rivers of Salt” (Copper Canyon: $11; 77 pp.). Kaufman grew up in Seattle, Washington, lived in San Francisco for many years, and now lives in Jerusalem. 1993 by Shirley Kaufman. Reprinted by permission .