To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Poem
7
The savage rhetoric of age
is all around, heart, lungs, womb
break, falter, stumble
as we drop dead quick or slow.
The phone rings. No-one there
when I shout Hello, hello, hello,
but over the magic wires
I hear birds calling.
The green things of the world
grow damp and lush with desire.
Lilacs wild by the road.
Love is the same old puzzle
and new mint sharp on the tongue.
The green things of the world
grow green, my old friend,
and words make their way or not.
For all we know, each virus speaks
against our cells with one
of the voices of one of the gods.
Sun, wind, a cinematic splendour
of moving clouds, the sound of water.
Alone or together, we practice
the good and bad days of our endurance, which
will go on without you, as with,
to the glad intolerable future, where
you wait for us in your poems.
April-July 1993
160