CROCUS TIME
 
 
The purple crocus with the golden cross
my wife uncovered on a cloudy Sunday
raking off the winter leaves, is tiny:
its petals are translucent baby-flesh,
the infant of the season.  As the clouds
roll on, uneasy, overhead, as chilly
air shuffles off dried-up debris,
this little fellow, like a piping clover
(bird, song, flower) feeds on sunlight.

 
A trunk line rumbles just around the corner.
You hear the thunder herd of SUVs,
truck honks, the slow-but-steady roar
of fossil fuels (piped from Saudi sands)
closeting the planet in an overheated,
stuffy greenhouse.  And it seems to me
Detroit and Riyadh aren’t so far apart:
one full of young men burning up the earth,
the other, with the same, burning for heaven.

 
Oases' rich mirages lure you, prince:
whether you’re the bad son of the West
or Sinbad of the East, the same vague form
(reclining figure, in a flying cave –
pure lustrous Paradise, or golden car)
embodies your untouchable desire,
unlimited, immaculate... and guides
you down the subtle, crooked corridors
where guns and butter (slippery) coincide.

 
Daydreams of the desert, smoking wheels
of would-be cowboys, fantasizing sheiks,
complacencies of conquest, opulence...
strangely, I sense the weather changing
at the pivot of the earth (cold passing).
Sad that so much innocence must die
before all crocuses and careful gardeners
(meek tenders at the mortal junction –
earth and heaven) come into their own.