Monday, February 9, 2009

February 8, 2009

Today I told my students
that anything could be used
in a love poem.

It may have been bold,
but I gingerly stand by my claim.

To explore its truth I'll use
the following four items
to tell you that I love you:

A garden hose
A rotten plum
A medical dictionary
The chinese character for grass.

It was your garden hose
I wrapped at seventeen
around the humerus and 
carpal catch-all of  my
laffy taffy limbs.

It was your plum
I took from Wallace Stevens
icebox after the insufficiently 
tasty ones were stolen.

It was your spleen and appendix,
your snake of an esophagus and your
little trapdoor of an epiglottis
I saw as I thumbed through
my father's medical dictionary.

And it was your poem I 
was writing when the 
accidental marks on the
top left corner of my page
managed to form a familiar
Chinese character.

I would have chosen hose
or plum or dictionary for you.
But as I sit on this sunny hill
A thousand moments from you,
it only seems appropriate that
instead of your name, with a hand
I can't hold, I've written grass.