The Zones of Paradise

SNAIL MAIL TO THE CORINTHIANS

SNAIL MAILTOTHE CORINTHIANS Smudged with algae and cattail lint, the dark glass of the pond no longer shows my face. Gullible summer—misled again into September’s seedy cul-de-sac. Faithful ants keep moving mountains, yellow jackets whet their apple-sweetened brass, and wind chimes, after the dog days’ lull, shiver back into a routine descant. But I’ve given up on the garden, those scrawny plants panting for rain— the early tenderness that bolted, the Romas that burned while I fiddled with wayward words. There’s another huge mistake beneath the lilac: one spore, bloated on moonlight, imagining itself as manna. I heft it like the head of a puffed-up prophet, to lob it through buckthorn and trumpet-vine, that no-gardener’s-zone between my deranged lavender and the niceties the neighbor keeps in line. So, which corner of the testament have I painted myself into this time?Which emporium of verse have I bullied my meaning through?  Overhead, the walnut dangles its intentions, a surge of sweetmeat over-packed in enough hard layers to knock even a leery woman loony. That’s love in a nutshell, I think— and scribble down another clumsy revelation from the garbled Greek, another valentine I only send in autumn’s mistranslation.  ...