recognizable: your neighborhood,
with of course some of the bigger trees
gone for pulp and the more upscale houses
sporting new riot-proof fencing which
they seem hardly to need in this calm sector
whose lawns look even more vacuumed than they used to.
Only a soft whirr of electric automobiles
ruffles unburdened air. Your own house looks
about the same, except for the solar panels.
Inside, the latest occupants sit facing
the wall-size liquid crystal flat TV screen
they haggle and commune with, ordering beach towels
or stockings, or instructing their stockbrokers,
while in the kitchen dinner cooks itself.
Why marvel over windows that flip at a touch
from clear to opaque, or carpets that a lifetime
of scuffs will never stain? This all was destined,
down to the newest model ultrasound toothbrush.
Only the stubborn, ordinary ratio
of sadness to happiness seems immune to progress,
and it will take more time than even you
have at your disposal to find out why.
The same and not the same, this venue fascinates,
spiriting you through closed familiar doors
on random unremarkable evenings when
you will have been gone
for how long? — Just a bit longer than your successors
have had to make these premises their own.
However much their climate-controlled rooms
glow vibrant with halogen, they will not see you.
But they may wonder why, for no clear reason,
they find their thoughts so often drawn to the past.
Back Again
The wormy apple tree
we chainsawed to a stump
is not content to be
a barren amputee.
It has produced a clump
of rank and spindly shoots,
a thicket still unthinned,
each one a witch’s wand,
suggesting that the roots
regard our surgery
as one more hostile thing
to overcome in spring,
like parried blades of wind —
mischief to live beyond.
A Bowl of Stone Fruit
Never forget the child’s face, nonplused
on touching first an apple, then a pear,
then a banana, his bewildered stare
becoming peevish as his buoyant trust
in the appearances that grown-ups prize
founders. Items for which his taste buds lusted
are for display, and regularly dusted.
Try to explain how people feast their eyes
on such a centerpiece, how they are able
to cherish a quartz peach, whose blushing skin
is bonded pigment, stone bearing within
no stone a tree would spring from. Now the table
stands taller than his head; but watch him grow,
to grow unflustered by the cold and hard
baubles adult taste holds in fond regard.
Never forget his face, first made to know.
Airs and Graces
All this was years ago — back in the days
of afternoon visits between ladies
with children brought along, resigned to boredom.
Her mother always stayed for a second cup;
her mother’s aunt, happy to be a hostess,
kept pressing macaroons on her niece
and grand-niece (something neither of them favored).
It always seemed to be raining when they went there
and there was no dog or cat to play with.
When the women were tired of glancing sideways
to see her fidgeting or shedding crumbs,
they’d send her to the spare room to explore
the Dress-Up Box. This could be interesting
if she was in the mood for vintage glamour.
The Box was really a modest-sized tin trunk,
lined with flowered wallpaper and filled
with bits of swank from several decades back.
There were a few dresses, much too large,
trimmed with velvet and imbued with camphor.
It was the accessories she was drawn to.
There was a pair of white gloves that on her
were almost elbow-length. The missing buttons
forced her to bunch them at her wrists, so that
she looked like a Walt Disney character.
There were various paper-and-bamboo fans
with
