Visiting the Botanical Garden
This last day of May,
I’ve seen my first mole person.
He was a trying rose,
Who April showers,
Brought to no flower.
Those two days he fluttered by,
His cheeks were ash,
Eyes yellow like old scotch tape,
His breath was a sulphur fog.
Staring carefully away that distant day,
I wondered, “How does he so thin?
My rice paper brother,
Throw any shadow at all?”
“It’s windy always where I am,” he said,
I, staring safely into the subway’s window,
Said “Nature abhors a vacuum, brother.”
On my way to the garden,
Mole people slumped behind the pilings,
Between the white-lit and bright-tiled stations,
I saw his skin like raw milk in the window.
“Seven hours?”
“Yea. Like driving just less hassle.”
“Yea.”
Each day started clear, grew cloudy, cold,
More rain each passing day,
I paced while he under bare bulbs,
Half-lit from his ever smoking, said,
“I’m failing. I need a place to go.”
Quicker past the bursting cherry trees,
Through the lattice
I saw my darting brother.
I found greedy frost talking down
To otherwise springing roses,
Now found clinging,
To the frozen ground.