The Poem in the Middle of Everything
Sometimes I know the way by heart without the poem.
I know how to move past the moonlight in the night sky
coming up over the mountains by morning.
I am walking with time at my back and fan palm trees
full of fronds, green as summer, swaying like dancers.
The sky opens the same way as the flowers do.
The sunflowers on my porch, yellow and crazy.
The petals open into flowers in the middle of the night.
Wars go on the same way, Gaza, Ukraine, nothing to explain
in detail except the daily losses, looking at what’s not there.
Everything is connected to everything else. It is what a poem is.
Even as I write, people in the wars are lining up for food,
fighting to stay alive, trying to forget what comes next.
This is why I make lentil soup, why I grow parsley
and cut up carrots and leeks and chard to cook
so I will not forget what a good day’s meal tastes like
and this is why I work longer than most and read fat old books
and finish crossword puzzles no matter how difficult,
so I will always think and feel deeply about the flowers
and the sky and what the land looks like in war zones and
how the palm trees sway and the moon glows and how much money
is needed for living at all and the poem, how everything is
all in it together with me, a woman with a small rescued dog named
Gracie, remembering love, looking for what comes next
Charlene Langfur is an organic gardener, a green writer living in the southern California desert with poetry publications recently in Acumen, The Hiram Review, and Poetry East.
Pegasus 