bloom

May 24, 2022

ORIGIN

I am told that I should write
about my origins, that is the stuff
that long poems are made of, or
rather the soil from which they bloom.

I have written about my birth mother
and visited her grave in West Virginia
seen those of my grandparents, met
a cousin, I’ve written all of that.

So its time to write about
my birth father, about the places
he was as a child, a young man,
where he is buried, dead long before

I discovered his existence, our link,
but I know nothing of Burlington,
or Camden and my passing knowledge
of New Jersey is limited
to Newark and its airport.

That is hardly the stuff of great poetry
or even mediocre memoir, so he
will be nothing more than a picture
of a gravestone in a national cemetery.

January 28, 2022

LAUNDRY LOVE

In the older romcom movies
there was often a meetcute
taking place in a laundromat.

I have spent far too many hours
in laundromats when traveling
on extended business trips.

I found one in Santa Cruz
with a coffee shop and figured
it was where romance would bloom.

I spend more than a few hours
watching but while the coffee
was always pouring, an espresso

or cappuccino hissing away,
I never saw a couple form, a date
offered, just a dryer tumbling

hopes and dreams, as they
withered in the heat, awaiting
the lonely basket home.

July 25, 2021

IN THE JUNGLE

If you close your eyes
you can imagine that this garden
was once a tropical jungle
as imagined by some clever
Floridian striving to separate
more tourists from their
dwindling travellers checks.

It has been carefully done over,
plants native and ornamental
replacing the vines and trees,
the alligators, real and imaginary
gone, now an exhibit of Lego animals,
the orchids in bloom, and
you wonder why anyone
once came here in the old days.

December 20, 2019

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER, NOT

My mother used to say, about
most anything, “Stop, you’ve had your fill.”
It was something she did by rote,
dictated I was certain then, by
some timer buried deep within her
that brought forth the phrase
like the beep of an oven timer
to indicate whenever she was baking
was certain to be just slightly underdone.
I didn’t listen to her, of course,
just paid the lip service of which
children are the acknowledge masters.
I still hear her voice echoing the phase
as i walk through the park each morning
stopping to gaze at whatever new
has come into bloom, the patterns
of the clouds over the hills to the south,
the conversation of the birds
who only think i don’t understand, but i
never get my fill of the beauty before me.

October 13, 2019

CYCLES

The Royal Poinciana is in full bloom,
its brilliant flame has led the sun
to take jealous refuge in the clouds
but we know not to be complacent.

Mother nature it is said, and we
are loathe to argue, can be at times
the most fickle of bitches and we
suspect that it will not be long
before she brings forth still another
tropical storm, a tantrum in which
the jacaranda’s beauty must cede
to her repressed envy, scattered
at our feet, a warning, perhaps,
but nonetheless a moment of beauty
that even nature cannot deny us.

June 6, 2019

TRIANGULATION

He says that foremost
Mao Zedong was a poet,
and knew that all poetry
must at some level
be political, must
incite the reader to rebel
against complacency.
I say that Zhao Zhenkai
wrote as Bei Dao
as the ultimate act
of rebellion, sacrificing
his very identity.
He says that I
am anchored by
the weight of realism,
and I say that he
needs reeducation.
She says that neither
of us will ever write
the just open bloom
of spring’s first rose.

First appeared in the May 2019 Issue of The Broadkill Reivew