“For I am filled with words,
choked by the rush of them within me”
(Job 32: 18, The Jerusalem Bible)

It is his autumn argument
against BREAKING NEWS:

The trumpeting, corrupt power
of absolute despots, the rubble

left in their wake. The silent screams
of mothers, their open mouths

atrocious as what they cannot bear
in their arms. The weather of Evil.

So he centers his prayer on
the bougainvilleas he planted

in the hanging baskets–long stems,
their red-leafed tips cascading

over the rim like a young wife
spreading her skirt around her

settling on the blanket in a field
of fresh-mown grass, a picnic

arrangement for her husband, their child,
she chooses to believe will come.

For now, the whirr of hummingbird wings
compelled to these indulgent plants

beckoning to the red-glass feeder,
its enticing syrup a moment’s respite,

addictive sip of artificial nectar, necessary
now all the garden flowers gone . . . for now.

Notes:

* (from Victoria Amelina’s poem “About a Crow,”
translated by Uilleam [William] Blacker)