Daylily Attempts a Seduction
“We don’t see many that can move like you,”
she cried. “It isn’t right for me to speak first.
But see my ruffled, fluted petals, my raspberry eye?
Drink in my small and chartreuse throat,”
she said tremblingly. “I beguile like a sari.
Come away from that rose. Touch my delicate
lavender flesh, my lime-green heart. You’re faded,
disarrayed, and brown; still I wish you’d see
that in one flower, I’m many.” She caused a stir
in the breath of the bear who’d entered the garden,
whose nose caught a smell as enticing as claret.
As she’d seemed to desire, he ate her up.
Echo Regains Her Voice
How evolution has labored
to achieve these miracles:
the graceful and
the loutish and
the rest of us. For us
words offer no relief
even when we’re at ease
and whether we begin
in certainty or doubt
we end in doubt
though sometimes
we decide to be happy.
“What’s mine is yours”
said the golden-haired man.
That’s my story
and I’m sticking to it.
Neighborly
At your face I stare and stare
I know that there’s a poem in there.
But when I try to read your face
I end up getting just no place.
And so I creep back down the hall
and listen to you through the wall.
My friends all think this very strange,
they fear that I am in some dange
r, that I've lost my savoir-faire,
but I just like your yellow hair.
Discontentment in March
The stir and the warmth
and the strong feel of life
that come with spring are
irritating, don’t you think?
Only serving as reminders
we’ll be clinging
to radiators as senior citizens,
poor old bags of bones
who should’ve got real jobs
and maybe had children
so we won’t have to eat
government cheese alone.
Still, I wish spring were here.
I tell Mother, but she says,
Oh no! If spring were here
you’d get spring fever.
Then you’d be dangerous.
But I’m danger already,
as you well know.
Here we’ll all live forever,
each in her own room
with a cat by the window.