June weekday, abundant sunshine,
vitamin D showering the neighborhood children,
and because I had nothing to write on,
I scratched a poem on the back of a letter
she happened to have written
to say that her many feelings
no longer included any feeling toward me.
My poem was not a response to her,
nor was it in any way about her.
I just happened to write it on the flip side
of her stationery with its silly border of flowers.
What the poem was about were the dry husks
that were dropping into the swimming pool
from the giant magnolia behind the house.
The big white blossoms, some the size of plates,
had had their day, and now
the brown husks were letting go
and falling, one by one,
into that blue-green rectangle of water.
And there they floated, pushed
around by a light breeze
and by the circular force of the pool jets,
and I, luckily, had nothing better to do
than to notice how one husk resembled
a shallop under sail passing an island
where a fair medieval lady was embowered,
while another one appeared cartoonish
and large enough to fit an owl
and a pussycat, leaving plenty of room
for me and an oversized pea-green guitar.