You’ve carried off a locket
(Haven’t you?),
which you’ve twined about your branch,
buds beyond a ring from wintertime:
treasure for your faded-turquoise front.
Pied white ‘n dull-green ‘n
shim’ring black,
treasuring the trove you’ve gathered.
A piercing piece of piping
through spring’s psychedelia.
Key kept looming ’bout the
drooping blooms, soft-singing
fuchsia – faded – and the colour of a
mango’s mostly-ripened flesh.
Heavy’s the pate that’s perched upon.
You’re looking leftward
(Aren’t you?),
watching for community to treasure.
See this Greenwich Village
in the turmoil of transition.
Tell us
(“Treasure it.”)
and see us try,
keep your feet upon
the locket’s chain.
Were it,
on its heart-side hinge,
to swing open,
would it hold within
what was lost ‘n unpreserved?
Will you leave it
when the petals loose
and the ring slips uncontained?
When the key’s no longer kept,
and the branches: barren?
You placed that locket
(Didn’t you?)
for to hang there, twined about
the branch you’ll – someday – flutter from,
in mem’ry of the treasure left ungathered;
in memory of all we didn’t save.
Image credit – Suren Nersisyan
william altoft 