Are you not that stray mignonette of my garden that dog that prowler in ripped jeans discovered by borderguards all mixed up about God & firing rabid up from Tijuana breaknecking 1-805? O hogback ridge upended rock carved by river in air o speak again granitic angel why this choice to fit a shape to suffering? Poets who make it to the traffic are free to expose their bodies the haunch of the road is dusty & drowsy bougainvillea in the cliff's ears It's a pink shirt it's a hot day civil authorities drink iced tea with a cup in the v of their legs & a bullet-proof vest they roadblock two miles shooting without fear they'll pile-up cars Why not die as you intended gas clouds over Paradise? shock-fronts of amputees retirees & songs for thee? why not die under the split in the moon we've come through? a whiff of aluminum escapes city center a whiff of aluminum settles its ounce of vapor San Diego once beautiful these mountains moved dawn & dusk in the transcendent sun where we are made to die only of love but who will live this if you die on fire whose vaporized metal will this stony site be over whom air-balloons strafe? Mark how the seashells find their way to the mountaintop once again there's an end to this world scaled down to memories & dreams be at home in my arms | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM'S POINT by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ON SIR PALMES FAIRBORNE'S TOMB, IN WESTERMINSTER ABBEY by JOHN DRYDEN TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN: THE THIRD DAY: AZRAEL by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MONNA INNOMINATA, A SONNET OF SONNETS: 14 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 53. WITHOUT HER by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI |