Pineapples gone wild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . putting on the Ritz.
***
Still Tethered to the Things of this World
This morning, music and a mountain
ground to a hill. I’m feeling a bit removed
from eighteen-layer wisdom, confined
by the limits of Spring. My body's heavy,
motionless yet still a moving target.
When I turn the radio on, boys from high-born
families speak, clinging to slogans (and cash).
The heart is slandered, color cracked by the logic
of a world unwilling (or unable) to hear this waterfall
of birds drowning beneath trains and trucks.
If I were a plant, I would welcome the drift
of petals, blowing before the last winter wind,
pushed to green, piling promise beside me,
but then, I could no longer consider the nature
of failure: Love betrayed, desire caressed to Greed.
The Earth ravished. I wish I could provide
Confessions, Truth, useful Memory, but
breathing is my only measure: a subtle influx
of color, scent, and spring. An outflow
of mountains and rain, the breath of flowers --
Blooming and falling as time falls, as snow falls,
as wine falls, fragrance after the cork is pulled,
as I fall, green tea spilled over rice, breathing
as fog breathes, as mountains breathe, reaching
sea and sky, suddenly apparent, suddenly real.
****