Poem

The Lillies are blooming
like French horns against
the silent dejected greys
that hang over Paris
like the day after a Scottish wedding

The wind is wet
with a dust of rain
and it blows
hard on the heads of a
scurrying grumbling proletariat

Time to change
the calender again.
This time I think I'll mark it
with reasons to be
happy.

Not that I have anything against
surprises, but I
think of the future so little
that surprises are getting
commonplace.

Somuchso that I don't bat an eye
at running into someone
I haven't seen in fifteen years
twice in the same month
and on two different continents.

The neighbors are frying fish
and someone is angry somewhere
shouting into a telephone.

Perhaps soon someone will make
love, and the courtyard will
echo cries of pleasure
that sound so much like pain
but are probably just the sheer
astonishment that comes
when anybody manages to lift
themselves up and away from
the merely ordinary
miracle of being alive
and ascends to some
greater than bodily
music -

where a human
spirit sings its bliss
to the earth
and its heavens.