goes to snow

you were grown on rode street
between cedar hedges
so she looked for you in boughs
 
she was not hot chocolate
she was not a tulip stem
this is not a valentine            it is
                                a calendar:
 
4 stitches where you cut your thumb
  on an oil barrel at the marina             she blanched
                                                   like canned
                                                         peaches
 
the motion that blurred your photos
was life going on
while you were parked behind the famous players
not too far from the future-shop glow
 
                                                 gone    a long
                       with the other sunshine smart-asses
                                           hollering from pick-up    
                                                                trucks
cat-call (don't let her crawl down
passing on the way
to passed out on your patio)
 
goodbyes are's common as watermelon
seeds            so she spits them out
onto hot sticky streets
                                            
      (let her fall like alder
      leaves )
 
there's not a drop
of snow where you are
             so she sold your family's ski-pass
              for the bus-fare north
& a gas-station sandwich
 
(now let her down like a meteor shower
punching holes
into ice-topped snow)
 
arrival  &  departure:
look for her under blue umbrellas
she'll be covered in repellent

2 comments:

hardyf said...

that's good. much emotion conveyed through concrete imagery. super-pleasing to my mouth and eyes.

katy said...

ditto.

i am particularly fond of the bit where she sells the ski-passes for a bus ticket and "gas station sandwich"

that's poetry, through and through.