More from John Gorman on the next page.

Three blocks closer to the beach there are none
But here, though stunted, they hold
made like their far cousins the salt cedars
beautiful in a balance of tribulations.
The wind turns what the sun lifts
as gravity arcs it all down.  It’s hard
to believe there wasn’t a worker, “hammered
gold and gold enameling.”  But Byzantium falls
Emperor and Sultan, the Patriarch, shorn of retinue
lives in the diminished splendor of his house
while those confections, satisfying the most sublime
intelligence of the eye whether or not
they come by chance
are lavished on us.  As we stroll the neighborhood
up to Food King for cigarettes and milk
back from parole counseling, volleyball, church
or running the kids to ballet in the Volvo
they’re there waving their ten thousand gothic leaves
phoenix feathers, feathers of the roc
everything in them gnarled, intricate, twisted,
perfect together, making a vivid splash of our land—
anchored life in the air, making a cave
of the sky.

Leaf by leaf she noses it, decoding
here a whole spear there a tip
now a section of stem
as if it were the Summa Theologica
this squat plant in a playground.
Such attention!  The mind and body of the bred
huntress one in pursuit of the message
inhaling it isomer by isomer
tracking, expertly, its tracings across the papyrus.
This is her Guide for the Perplexed,
her Blackstone, her Constitution
help from her comrades in time.
A trail of awakenings
within the planetary densities of earth,
its thin envelope of air.

Generously given, though issued only after much
deliberation, subject to change and erosion,
put here on purpose,
such testimonies sustain her
and the world
keeps on dawning in doglight.

The oleanders wave
their poison wands
in poison air
like prairie weeds

I’ve emigrated.
No elm, not even a dead one,
arches from this hot clay.
How shocking the palms are
not soft at all
not like hair for all
their ferny intricacy.
Rough trunks
leaves that gleam in the heat
like painted metal.
their fronds, fondled,
slice your hands.

But in the tent
and temple of this magnolia
glossy darkness
hung with lights:

I close my eyes,
inhale,
grow small
and find the north foundation wall
behind its row of bridal veil
thin place a dog,
a child goes
where lily-of-the-valley gorws.

As if, if I bent
to touch this crackled earth
I’d feel that softness
like bread, like cake,
wet, loam-flecked earthworms
venomless ants.

Take what your vague earthmother grants

coarser grass that’s green all year
lizard for lilac for egret for spear-
like forsythia for saltmarsh for snow.
Go,
it’s a trade
perfume for perfume
a new depth of shade
where wisteria dazzles the moss hung tree.