When they escort you to my body they will burn,
when I am watching from that other country,
when you are weary of embellishments
death insists upon, the wilting pastels,
She kept the potatoes beneath the kitchen sink
in a dank place I never dared to enter.
But at fall planting time Mother always sent me
down into that moldy smelling cupboard,
Last night my son, celebrating his marriage,
descended with his Turkish bride from a mid-
century Bel Air to U2’s “All
I Want Is You” & danced under the stars
The unborn who never make it into this world are edible
blossoms in the orphic throat of God, garlanded by floral
seraphs. Yes, the sky-blue borage, the cilantro and fennel
and calendula, the crystallized viola and skirted zucchini,
At a party the random tumbling voices
of friends gathered from distant places
together in one room, my son weaves
through the room with wine, kissing and pouring,
In another dispensation among the old
withering codes a young American woman
walked as if she balanced a gold cage
of singing birds on a coil of her hair
In the disorderly lives of our friends a marriage
of youngsters gallantly blinded by lusts consummated
in bawdy places, never beds—on hay bales,
on the back stairs of a dorm, or coal cellars,
To peddle a better beater. Broader
shouldered and wasp waisted, its cradled
double floats in struck-up loops set snug
in frame limb, driven by a winged shaft
So did we get it wrong, those years ago?
That’s “we,” the brainy boys and girls, elite
And blessed in every sort of way, judgmental
To a fault, agnostic to be sure.
