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.