A poem for our times

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)