Invisible Palaces
Mothers' Day 2011
The old porch where she combed my daughter’s
golden hair, where we sat on second hand
rattan from my mother’s great-grand-porch
where I mosquito slapped and watched TV
on poplar summer evenings so peppered
with life that they could never, never be!
Combing golden hair, she transforms
the kiln-fired brick, dusty mortar, and the tile
into a glazed mosaic of elegant scheme;
she paints Sheherazad’s aviaries
matted within a garden of vermilion
parrots and bright and hand-dyed toucans!
We sit in our bergamot-scented Alhambra,
serene as the Caliph’s diligent Wazeers,
in the Middle Ages of parenthood -
an endless arcade where metal windows
turn to rich Arab wood, and esparto
shades undulate to distant seashore wind.
--
notes
Posted early because I can't wait any longer. Maybe I'll start doing two poems a week. Look out!
Alhambra - the palace in Spain
Wazeer - the main minister of an Islamic ruler
This tries to express how love and parenthood transform humble surroundings into magnificence.
--
3 comments:
I think this poem really expresses the adoration you bear towards your wife too. :) It is very sincere. How did you stand the mosquitoes? I can't stand mosquitoes even if they're not sinking their drill into me!
Ben
Thanks, Ben.
Did not have much choice with mosquitoes back then. When bitten, the method of treatment was to wet the skin and pack a layer of salt on the bite.
My brother and I had A/C in our bedroom for his allergies. Not much A/C elsewhere. Lot of hot, still nights in bed, awake and staring out the window at the range lights in the river and lightning bus.
And I do so remember sitting on the concrete step down from the dining room into the attached summer porch, where the black and white TV flickered its strobe antiquity: Lucy and Desi, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason...
mesmerized by music and light.
...that is "lightning bugs" not lightning bus, even though I do like the sound of a summer "lightning bus".
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