December dawn
a blue ring dances
beneath the teapot
fresh snow
on a withered fig
the eyes of a deer
also
in this hurricane
ensÅ
a splash of Shiraz
the wail of
a wounded dear
puzzle peace
nothing about us
without us
Dupont Circle Metro
sunlight rings the bell
of a saxophone
brushing my nose
and her hair
morning breeze
at Woodley Park
the unbroken stillness
of an escalator
a taper of red
outside the grill
September sunset
Maybe you’ve already heard about how
one night I allegedly gave Emily a ring
of rust on the windowsill of her heart,
or how I couldn’t see that her name could
begin with the number e, but let’s not
pretend that she, my ex in cat glasses
and a floral sundress, didn’t hand me back
that bundle of fresh daisies, then dash
across a bridge—frfr—just as my iPod
played Ahmad Jamal’s cover of “Wave.”
Both waves & tears can be falling water.
A wave can be water or a flag rippling.
Some flags can be read. And surely as
the Em Dash is named for Dickinson,
before wrestling with her texts, maybe
I should’ve taken an ESL course: Emoji
as a Second Language. Perhaps she fled
because I didn’t know the difference
between semaphore & metaphor or
perhaps because I couldn’t play a more
dominant chord, or perhaps she simply
longed for the longer fingers of a pianist
to key the silent C of her efflorescence.
Maybe I crossed a cantilever bridge on a
“murmuring day” in May to toss a bouquet
of daisies into the Monongahela. Perhaps
a certain nose accumulated a few scents
toiling overtime in the olfactories, but why
did my Beloved flee after Jamal finished
fingering falling water? Here I should be
frank, right? Forget that, even if it’s true,
I didn’t misread Emily due to the wavy sines
piercing my ears. Simply say, in place of
her neck I nosed a bottle-blue scarf she’d left
on the arm of a sofa. A steel cantilever
here only holds up reality. Who could’ve
smelled farewell before she high-heeled
out the door? Before late sunlight outlined
her path and I came to believe in God as
a metaphor for magenta or a sugar pill? I still
can’t imagine tears as more than waves
of salt water under the bridge of my glasses.
Didn’t Emily beg us to “dwell in possibility” ?
Is it too late to say I didn’t see the name of Jamal’s
next song until crow’s wings darkened the day’s
eye or why my heart skipped to flag a refrain
that almost rhymed with the fragrance of daisies?
