–not the snow that mounted in higher and
higher walls shoved to the curb by the plows
not that, and not the red in the rose leaves either
as they cut through the buds, fan their colors,
burst for all the world like that rough fall and winter,
with the chaos of the hospital, then you coming home,
the story we left out about the first day when you fell:
we picked ourselves up, or rather I picked you up,
we laughed, and you got better, over and over, every day
you got better, your voice came back, you walked further
and further up the street and got stronger: well,
not that either, so let’s book the flight to Oujda
and Meknes, and once we’re there we can hire a grand taxi
to Essaouira on the edge of the Atlantic: let’s get lost
in something else that won’t last, and prize it, let
its colors unfurl and fade in a day, let it blossom,
before we even register it, let it surge and drop:
I confess, I’m sick to death of this story, so banal,
but as it happens I have saved my harshest words to tell it:
still, if we take the hint, I can hold them a little longer,
if we just go and keep going, take no thought for tomorrow
because we are the lilies of the field, we do not
spin the lesson of impermanence, let’s let that lesson
teach itself: haven’t we had enough? and we could be nothing
but chasing blossom and perfume, savor and dream,
seek nothing but baptism in the saltiest water,
nothing but leaf turn, silt sift, current churn and light lift,
to be there to see it, to dissolve into it, and what else
is there? I ask you, what else?
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