Touching the harmonium’s black
keys, singing a dhun and stopping
a Florida night in a Boston’s
I couldn’t make out your melody
was sweeter than any Demerara
sugar. The closest we came
to conversation: Are you off
on holiday then? No. I’m finished.
So quickly? Yes. Goodbye? Yes.
You toss that cabbage
head into your room. I do not know
your name. I [...]

They are dismantling the tents in the dusk.
The steel poleframes clanging as they fall
to the ground. We are still sitting on the tarmac
under a few leaves yellowing in the September sun
a folk artist singing, “This land is my land”
and then, “Where have all the flowers gone—gone
for graveyards everyone.” You are not supposed
to cry for strangers, [...]

Lemon-green buds cover the tarmac.
Young maple leaves laugh
in the wind. This is not the way    
to say goodbye; not in the pub
by a cold river, or a coffeehouse
cozy and comforted by a dozen ears
listening for tomorrow. Do not look back
to this piped time; the one who talked
too much, the one whose ears went out
to space, whose [...]

LANTANA STRANGLING IXORA
There were times in the morning
we questioned the bloom
of the previous evening, watering
cana lilies, clearing the live oak
acorns from our white wrought-iron bench
How do ripe plantains smell?
Like ripe bananas. You could laugh
until after dinner. I will hold
Radhakrishnan’s interpretations of the Upanishads
until you snap on the ceiling fan
And we swirl on the sheets [...]