Perambulating in the almost-spring
for 60 minutes, I went south and west.
I took a photograph of every thing
that caught my fancy. And the last was best.
The street was bare of traffic, I’ll attest.
I crossed it unmolested to a sign
that wasn’t accurate but did suggest,
two blocks away, two ways, from borderline.
I heard the siren winding down behind
me as I strode due west, and then came more.
Ahead of me another whistle whined,
as eastward-bound a second engine’s roar
joined up to fill the air. What met was kind
of face-to-face, and from each truck a pour
of uniforms that merged to urgent treat.
Two giant engines stopped and blocked the street.
This year crocosmia assumes the place
where iris stalked last spring. Perhaps it grows
by pokeweed’s influence; there’s little space
for other sprouts. And yet I spot a rose
abloom above the boardwalk. I suppose
that bush will bud from now through early fall.
Its limbs will reach for where the sun bestows
the energy for floral protocol.
The fly attempted an escape, I feel,
by dashing to the window’s tempting light,
but it will not be opened. The appeal
was clear but not productive. Stuttered flight
exhausted it, and felled it in my sight.
I watched its final twitches on the floor.
When effort that’s repeated doesn’t right
the hazard, one must shift one’s course some more.
October travel calls from months away.
My first-born has her golden jubilee.
I’m sponsoring a trip for us – I’ll pay
the fares for where she’ll soon decide to be.
It looks like London’s her first choice, to stay
at least a week, with days in NYC
before, and Paris after: beds to book,
and flights to buy, and good times while we look.
It took some weeks to get the gardener here,
but I and winter wilt could stand the wait.
He came last week, with tools to prune and shear
the overgrowth away from door to gate.
There’s more to do before all paths are clear
and pokeweed meets its demolition fate,
but progress shows, in leaf and limb and soil.
I Zelle with happy gratitude his toil.
Announcing hospice as the next address
to which she’ll move her mother, I was stunned.
I hid surprise to not compound her stress,
but had no clue the case was moribund.
Poor thing: her mother’s age is three years less
than 80. We all thought she had a fund
of years ahead, but slippage isn’t mind
alone. Her fails are of the lethal kind.
He wasn’t pleased I didn’t deign to pause
and let him canvass me to give or sign.
His “don’t you care about black women” clause
exasperated me. I can refine
objection – I don’t quarrel with the cause –
but I object to wasted words. A line
should be effective, conscientious, styled.
But I was whitely elderly profiled.
Near 20 years ago my father died,
and statements Mom then made resound in me.
Although since 6 she tended to deride
what drafts I shared of prose and poetry,
she voiced concern about her legacy.
She looked askance and warned “Don’t paint me ill.”
At graveside I orated eulogy,
but since then words of praise evade my quill.
A former neighbor carved our yard, contoured
the square of weedy dirt between our doors,
and planted chosen foliage: assured
to us a garden here. She moved away,
but her design and many shrubs endured,
and I esteem her work, and volunteers
that found the ground as birds and insects lured
them. Here we planted neither bulbs nor spores,
but yearly I find lilies, March-matured.
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