The shameful reek of radishes.
The nodding head of lettuce.
Somewhere a red onion weeps.
Black olives pitted against whom?
Someone must control the whole,
roam the outskirts of the bowl,
armed with pepper spray,
tongs at the ready.
A dressing down’s perhaps in order.
A shredding of the carrot crew.
Put the hardboiled egg in solitary.
Toss the rest about.
Threaten and serve.
Call in the choppers.
In the pulling tide of time
we seemed to lose perspective.
Visionary acumen appeared
to drift away.
In the threatening twilight,
hiding now our sole objective,
voices sought out silence
although much was left to say.
As bullet shots and microdots
created their own language,
a media hypnosis
cast a pall across the land.
Those within could bask in sin
while those without must anguish.
Someone pulled the plug
on this utopia we planned.
How to describe a hayfield without sneezing?
Or portray the sunlight slanting through the barn
as more than dust motes aswarm?
Even the cat running the fence above the flowers
caused him significant problems.
Rilke’s allergy dominated his senses,
if not his poetry. Seldom discussed are his
"Ode to a Sodden Handkerchief" or
"Your Lips Are as Red as My Eyes, My Love."
And no one seems to care about his letters
to a young allergist, suffering though they may be.
Another season come and gone
without a hit, without a run,
without a homer o’er the fence
imagined once by circumstance.
No uniform in sunset glow.
No leaping catch, no hurried throw.
No home run trot, no pickoff toss.
Time got the win. Age took the loss.
