For Kenneth and Miriam Patchen
Al Young
Here
I am cutting you
these fresh healthy flowers
from my sick bed
where I toss with nickel illuminations.
Time is a fever
that burns in the pores
consuming everything the mind creates.
I send you
this cool arrangement of dream blossoms
these tender stems & shiny leaves
while I shiver
& detect in your own eyes
of gentle remove
a similar disgust with what has come
to our fat cancerous land
of the sensual circus
& the disembodied broadcast wave,
swallowing in sorrow
to hear the old hatred
& uncover selfishness
rumbling back up from the bosoms of men
out into the good open air.
May these new flowers
from the forest of my heart
bring you a breath of the joy
men must believe they are going to recover
by moving again & again
against one another.
From The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment