The Cherry Blossom Tree
You had already donated me a cold and scented
pillow by the time my remedial memoirs shook
me from my sleep. Arm numb, I paint myself a ceiling
cinema for a while – out of focus Cavaliers
berating loose-toothed troubadours, shaking and unshaven
behind pikes. Standing in the doorway in a towel, bearded
with foam, I see you slyly sleeping in the imprint
you will leave that I will watch from the doorway, bearded
with foam, in a towel, scratching at my night-time, trying bribe
upon promise upon sacrifice to my drunken
dreams. How could you have slipped away unnoticed? A flame
sighed out that darkness could not dim; a perfect note at
perfect pitch that silence could not hide. My old blue chair,
that offers springs like tight-lipped gypsy weeds, presses cold
and eager on my dampened back. I watch the old man
across the solid stream street hatchet bitterly to
the Cherry Blossom, that would have grown until the air ran out.
Django treads the dimples of a ballad on the old
paint-flecked radio, “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” And my
dreams are no more closer than my memories of birth.
My coffee rests, befriended, in its porcelain bouquet
taunting at the whiskey in its scabbard on the dresser
next to other colognes and pandemic cosmetics.
and as I section my morning brain – one half to seed
the paper news over my bacon and my beans, the
other to hold you steady, in a frame as your
cupid lips mutter in their dream, your dirty blond hair
like a halo, your curved, soft eyelids grumbling like a moth
beneath the pupa. The doorbell rings and flowers
and a card, “Sorry I left so early – there is chilli
on the stove. Will be home late.” All day I cannot focus,
my heart goes out, instead, to the Cherry Blossom Tree.
Published in Parameter Magazine, March 2006