Profit
Not one of those splashy bloomers
I envied on other people’s lawns,
yet, hemmed in between house
and hedge, the magnolia
flowers each May, and I count
the buds, repeatedly
which means obsessively.
I bet I could give each one a name
like Jane Goodall’s chimps
except I’m nothing like Jane Goodall,
more like some wooden, sad
old miser out of Balzac.
I count the pink blazing flowers too:
It feels like profit.
So where was the satisfaction
when the end of summer brought
an extra dividend, a second flowering?
Everywhere, the viral florescence
was bringing us to our knees. I was
swimming in all kinds of red ink,
ready to close the books
on summer, till this fresh crop
of fiery petals rained
down on my neatly ruled columns
like starlight from a far treasury where
place means time and radiance leaping from was
to will be replenishes now, the casual
happiness that can’t be saved or spent.
Ann Lauinger’s two books are Persuasions of Fall (Agha Shahid Ali Prize for Poetry), and Against Butterflies. Read more.