Four Poems

 

Lynne

Lynne, woman fair
living on the tip of the Africa
I have dreamed of:
I have dreamed of green Africa
somnolent with growth

Of brown Africa,
sand the color of wheat
When the sun is orange

blue Africa,
The color of the ocean
you gaze upon with your sweet face

Lynne, woman fair
Living on the tip of the Africa
I have dreamed of:
I have dreamed of giraffes eating clouds,
Of flamingos flying across the pink,
diaphanous night air

Of jacaranda blossoms carpeting the stair,
But never dreamed of finding you there.

 

Buying A Rabbit

She lived with her daughter
when winter was white
and the city was cold,
paid her way with secrets--
each one a fat purse.

She once had a husband.
When he couldn't be her audience,
she took lovers
but they wanted anything
but love.

With toothbrush and guitar
she moved through years
looking for a room
with a window. She liked
to peer behind at the trail
she made.

 

The Rose Garden

The wrought-iron gate swung inward
into a half-acre of roses
grouped by color, by name
after gardeners, after lovers

Bees were everywhere
We took barefoot chances
with bees in grass as plush
as it would ever be again.

This was roses and scented air,
a sky washed in cobalt.
We outstretched our arms in a freedom
only young girls know.

If I knew roses now,
I'd putter in the hips and thorns
name one after you
and walk barefoot careless
as I did back then.

 

U-Haul

A U-Haul is backed up on
my neighbor's lawn
tromped into yellow patches.
It's the big kind with a cab,

yet where will all the children
ride--lice ridden and barefoot
from now to fall?
And where will they go

that is better than here?
There's a river close by
and thirty year trees arch
over the pavement

where roller bladers glide
on their licorice skates
til ten at night, where at least
one couple dances their argument

into the street
where cars have stopped moving
and the cats come out
to socialize, house-to-house.

Owned by everyone
and no one, they'll gradually slink back
inside the hollowed-out couch
left behind on the bitten porch.