Three Poems

Surrounded by an abundance

of December’s orchids, succulents and cyclamen,

we could barely stand face to face.

I asked her why my hoya had lost its variegation,

unlike the young specimen I spied on the shelf.

How often do you fertilize it?

I don’t.

Never? Is it dying?

No. It continues to grow.

When did you last re-pot?

It’s been in the same pot for thirty years.

Thirty years in the same dirt!

But dirt degrades, there should be nothing left.

I realized then that my hoya may be ten years older

than this lovely young woman with big dark eyes

that grew wider with astonishment.

Perhaps to help understand, I explained it was given

to me by someone special long ago, that it lived

in a beautiful corner of the house, with a stained glass

window that maybe blocks too much of the light, but

the hoya was happy, climbing upward by curling itself

around the venetian blind cord.

I must have sounded wistful. She asked if

the person who gave it to me had died.

No, I said, smiling softly, just passed through my life.

Her eyes wider still, she whispered Oh!

It is living on love. That happens.

Ephemera

your new poet-self surprises

me, appears unexpected

not even 8:30 a.m. and you’re flitting

about in a loose bathrobe as I finish

the laundry, spouting the ephemeral

nature of mayflies

years to develop, only one day as an adult

with no mouth, laying thousands of eggs

this seems the stuff of poetry

but as you go on about histogenesis, diaphase,

subimago, Occam’s Razor while I am

eating peanut butter toast

with apricot jam—and you, waving

your wide-winged arms—I try

to lock in, but the notions are fleeting,

last not even one day

Wide-eyed ocean blue, riding Paia currents

with sea turtles. Translucent green

of raindrops that plunk the banana trees.

Locking eyes with manta rays,

yours and theirs inky blue. Grey-green

in the briny cenote where you hunt

for manatees. The crisp cold of Glacier Bay

turns them stark turquoise. The shadows

of redwoods, laurels, sword ferns, deep olive.

This was before the warming

the melting

before the fires and smoke

white death of reefs

before water swallowed the coasts

before your eyes paled in sorrow.