It’s that brief time, no more than 3 days,
when you sit outside and tiny, unarmored green bugs
traipse all over you. Delicate, perplexed,
oblivious maybe, maybe amorous,
supplicant after a moment of clinging,
or ranting, working their vast jaw apparatus,
a little singing from the back legs before
they fall apart into the 16 or 17 molecules
of which they’re made. Alms, alms.
I love how they get messed up in my arm hair,
how they signal and collapse. Who knows
what forest they wander in. Who knows
where they’re going or if they’re just blown about
like seeds or broken kites or why they are so stupid
to go up your nose or in your ears;
not like fleas sipping at the corner of the eye,
not like yellowjackets scouting for meat,
their intentions are vague as prepositions.
Who knows what autumn they are already in. Oh,
can’t we save them or just understand them which
reminds me of Kenneth Koch whom I’ve always
wanted to meet, well, not exactly meet because
almost everyone I’ve wanted to meet then met
has turned out to be a disappointment, not him or her
exactly, more the meeting itself like concrete
that doesn’t set, the pole just goes on wobbling.
No, I’d just like to say hello and thank him
for how his poems blurt out things like
Oh, can’t we save them! although he read
at the college where I work the year before
I got there and the guy who picked him up
at the airport now hates him. Imagine,
hating Kenneth Koch. Imagine hating
peach trees. Maybe we expect to understand too much
or expect too much from understanding. Like how
we showed the nursery man a sprig of the bush
we wanted, swiped from down the street and how
one of his eyes looks slightly off as if something
worrisome was right behind you so he’d probably be
a good person to have with you in a dangerous
situation but would also, and maybe because of,
always make you nervous, but we weren’t nervous,
we were excited even as he scratched his head
where the hair used to be, all nervousness
is excitement but all excitement isn’t nervous,
and went inside and got the big book and found
Dipelta yunnanensis to match our snip and
description of the papery bark and silhouette
but no, he never had any of those and it was
too late to get any this year but he’d put us
on a list. It seemed he had once had tragedy
in his life, had wrecked everything but somehow
found his way to opening a nursery and becoming
healed and deliberate and wise as only people
who’ve wrecked their lives can get. He filled
our small car with 6 lilacs instead.
4 purple dwarfs, 2 French hybrids. Imagine
doing nothing but that, lifting the young plants
by their wrists, loading cars with more than
anyone would think could fit. Imagine having
six green eyes. Imagine what an emerald sees.
Imagine our ride home, sky fat with storms
passing through, a white peony face down
in the dirt, heavy with opening and rain.
Imagine being that close to death.