With Billy on the balcony

 

This season we aren’t going anywhere

no Almora, nope, not even Darjeeling

and certainly no quaint cobbled foreign square.

There’s rain. Coffee. The hibiscus is blooming.

 

How pleasant it is to avoid all hill towns –

I have the poetry of Billy Collins.

No need to trudge, out of breath, up and down.

Home with coffee. And the sound of the rain falling.

 

No urge to charge in to ancient monasteries,

marvel round eyed at gold icons and things.

Here’s the flamboyant. And the frangipanis.

A rain soaked bedraggled bird that still sings.

 

And Billy points out that Bologna and Rome

aren’t a patch on rain and coffee at home.

Listening

 

I haven’t seen you for some time, though you’ve been

all around me everywhere, in the needle thin

alleys, on Juliet balconies in spring –

not in eggshell numbers, nor pixels nor a pin.

 

Flesh smells and blood’s awkward outside a vein.

No one knows why it stops. Nor exactly when.

We only know it will. Without a question.

It too will pass. Never come this way again.

 

I’ll yank my senses free and come hold you close

and breathe you in, the rankness of flesh and rose,

purple orchid heart, the exhaust off the roads.

And we’ll walk off someplace where no one goes.

 

I’ll listen with my entire body to you,

the peace of your quiet, velvet voice all day through.