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Open/Spring poem
Saturday, April 18, 2009
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April is the sweetest month, and also May,
When grim March has passed away
And the sun, the luxurious sun,
Shines on everyone
When sweet liberty has many pursuers
And a sweet and sour smell comes up from the sewers
Spring is chemistry in action,
A season of gasification and liquefaction
And spring fever is harder and harder to curb
And any noun is likely to become a verb.
Birds fly in from far beyond
To nest in trees and by the pond
Robins are singing, cheerily, cheer-up, cheerily,
And singing sincerely
The sound of bike chains unwrapping from around lampposts and parking meters,
The sound of eggbeaters making margaritas,
Easter candy half price — coconut eggs and chocolate flowers
Exercising mysterious powers
Old couples strolling, children, lovers,
Steam coming out of manhole covers.
And a parade of dogs, dachshunds, collies, terriers, yorkies, and a brown Pekinese,
And a poodle with a pom on the end of his tail wagging in the breeze
People walking down the street
Eating a paper cone full of Pomme Frites
And one man eats a
Folded up slice of sausage pizza.
And if you don’t think that’s delicious,
Roasted nuts, fresh pickles, fried knishes
Pink lemonade
Freshly made
People and their laptops sitting outside
Eating calamari deep-fried
Crispy hotdogs with red onions and kraut
And mustard that makes you twist and shout
Soft serve ice cream dipped in butterscotch
Which you watch
Being served up softly and dipped
And gripped
In the hand and licked,
And though you are on a strict
No-butterscotch diet,
You try it
People working the crossword in the sun,
And twenty-one
Down
Is a noun
That means
A kind of greens
Served in a bowl:
Escarole.
The smell of yellow forsythia
Stays with you
And of roses,
One supposes,
And how auspicious
Is the narcissus
As the nose thrills
To the scene of daffodils
As the eye focuses
On a bed of purple crocuses
A man kneels on the sidewalk
Making pastel portraits in chalk
Women thinking outside the box
In dresses covered in lilacs, in yellow paisley frocks
Women escaping from the dull and the mediocre
In Bengali saris, in silk scarves of saffron, indigo, teal, ochre
The clothing of romance
Daisy flip flops, bohemian scarves, panama hats, peg leg pants
Shirts of sea glass green and azure blue,
Persian pink,, heliotrope too,
Absinthe, raspberry, and wisteria
A sort of painterly hysteria
Of bumble yellow and bamboo green,
Gumball pink and aquamarine.
A woman passes
Wearing big purple sunglasses
Beautiful women wearing shorts with tights
Advertising their legs like they wore flashing lights
Sea foam green tank top with embroidered flowers
Exercising mysterious tank top powers.
Ruffled tube tops and tunics and water-color floral peasant blouses
Even on older spouses.
Women in skin-colored blouses that make men
Do a double-take now and then
And sprain their necks
Thinking about redemption.
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