pushes in flotilla formation over the Blue Ridge,
backdrop for this drop-dead profusion,
blush-pink cherry, dogwood, may apples
lisping serpentine brick walls,
less Plato’s “grove of Academe”
& more like inhaling the candied inside
of a closet of petticoats. O Jefferson,
lover of muslins, secrets, words: the plums
are losing their bees. This is the least of it.
Sea levels rise, in you, in me, denial’s toxins
ever with us. A student passes by,
startling the tulips in their oval beds.
It’s just that I don’t love him
anymore, she tells the air. We’ve all been her.
Or him. True, I’d know a mockingbird anywhere,
mimicking her cell phone, its barks & arias,
but cannot, being analogic, write the code—can she?—
that might declare what truth rides horizon’s lupine nimbus:
that every possible future lies within us?
