Winter Flowers

In fresh snow that fell on old snow

I see wild roses in bloom, springtime,

an orchard of apple and peach trees in bloom,

lovers of different preferences

walking naked in new snow, not shivering,

no illusion, no delusion, no bluebells.

Why should I live by reality that murders?

I wear a coat of hope and desire.

I follow fallen maple leaves abducted by the wind.

I declare I am a Not Quite, almost a nonentity.

I fought for that “almost.”

I lift up and button my collar of hope.

I simply refuse to leave the universe.

I’m all the aunts in my father’s house and all my uncles too.

I had fifty great-great-grand-grandmothers

who got to Paradise, like Enoch, without dying.

Once my friends and I went out in deep paradise snow

with Saint Bernards and Great Pyrenees

to find those lost in the blizzard that God made for Himself

because He prefers not seeing what happens on earth.

With touch He can hear, taste, smell, see,

and He has fourteen other senses there are no words for.

Memory, He said, is a sense, not a power.

Who am I to disagree with Him?

There are some vegetarians among you,

so I will tell you what He eats.

It’s green, and cows and sheep eat it too.

He picks His teeth. I think I heard Him say,

“Gentlemen don’t void in swimming pools or the ocean.

I like your dirty jokes, I prefer them in meter.”

He told me to carry on.

I thought “On” was a Norse god. He said, “No,

it’s just a burden that gets heavier,

the burden makes you stronger.”

“Isn’t on the Japanese debt to ancestors?” I countered.

He resents hearing the prayers and praise of sycophants.

“How come you are speaking to me?” I asked.

He speaks Silence, languages I call “Night” and “Day.”

His politics? “Nations” to Him are “a form of masturbation.”

Original blasphemy amuses Him, describes

His coitus with living creatures,

mothers, His self,

a whale, a male praying mantis dying to mate.

He likes to hear, “do unto others

what you would not want others to do unto you.”

Instead of a prayer rug,

I stitch Him a pillow of false proverbs:

“in the house of the hangman talk of rope.”

I asked Him if I ever did anything he liked.

“You planted eggplant too close to the cucumbers

and they married. I blessed that wedding,

sent roses by another name.”

“How come you speak to me?” I asked.

He said He was not speaking to me,

“Consult Coleridge on the Imagination.”

He waved, He did not say goodbye.