The Blueberry Man
This drama, borne on jittery air,
is like a jack-in-the-pulpit exploding
in early spring, that abruptly retreats,
the fleshy stalk shriveling by summer.
You ask what passage will I choose?
But, still, you insist on wearing the ornate
mask dripping with fruit—berries,
grapes, and blue-black figs. I’m not fooled!
I’m not confused! I see you trying to hide
your every disguise beyond the distant quay.
And yes, perhaps each minute can hold
an enchantment. But, this too, can vanish
in just another peeled mango. Of course
I believe in singing and dancing, but
will stay with the calm, apple-cheeked lover—
happy at home tending his own orchard.
Flamingo
It’s the color he loves best: salmon, ginger, sunset pink, mango, blush, coral, peach, shrimp, tequila sunrise—some shade of tropical. The bird stood next to its plaster mate in his aunt’s yard along White River. He and his sister are photographed in sun suits in front of long arching necks. That time reminds him of romance over the airwaves, melodies of lovely hula hands, war chants from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. During hardships over a twenty-year tour of duty—Iran, Korea, Ethiopia—he thinks about the color, it gives him something to laugh about as he remembers his fluorescent socks in the same shade running track in high school, and the brightly painted bird framed in little square sections of a mirror on the wall at home. He settles in the foothills, a sign—DEER RUN—attached to the mailbox. White tail bucks and red maples watch over the new plastic flamingo sitting in the backyard under tiki lights. A classic Chevy pickup is parked in the driveway, high gloss in the same color mixed by a computer at Ace Hardware down the road. In a new century, towers down, he offers the flamingo to his sister who declines—it will not fit in with starman or dancer with bird-on-toe that play next to her dry streambed. He thumbs through a newer catalogue, and selects a great blue heron with silver tips under the wings, to keep the other company, and guard his dreams of paradise.
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