grows taller now after we paid someone
to cut down our fruitless plum tree
which stole its sun. I enter my garage
after work and notice a champagne
bucket brimming with the opaque
white flowers from this tree
sitting on the dryer. As I enter the door,
my daughter exclaims “It is time
for the party! Don’t tell Nana!”
I ask “What party?” and she answers
“The surprise with the confetti! Don’t tell!”
I am the only one leaving the house
during this plague—my wife home
with our new baby and her mother
and Leilani. Before dinner she ushers
us out into a bath of afternoon sun,
Nana holding the baby, wife in cahoots
with Lani, and me forming a circle around
the silver container. And then Surprise!
Ivory bells fly into the air
and shower down onto our shoulders
clinging to our hair. All day
I have evaded invisible clouds
of virus shooting from mouths
threatening to erase light and breath.
So I dig in with both hands
and loft the brittle shells up into clouds
of translucent hail which dance on the deck
like hummingbird bones. I feel
the moist flowers in my fingers
as the fragile skin between brightness
and silence floats around our bodies.
—Published previously in Letters in Quarantine (21 March 2020),
a Facebook group founded by Arthur Kayzakian; poem appears here with poet’s
permission.
helps our veterans heal, as an RN. In previous lives he taught high school and practiced acupuncture. He has recent writing in Cultural Weekly, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Noble/Gas Qtrly, Slippery Elm, and Swimming with Elephants, among others. His first collection, The only thing that makes sense is to grow, was published by Moon Tide Press in December 2019.
Poet’s website:
https://ferrypoetry.com