University of Virginia

 

A hearse of thundercloud, almost military,

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?