Pink Tree, and: Trauma Man, and: Christmas Cactus, and: The Impossible Dream

That tree resplendent in her sudden pinkflowering, what does she thinkof the outrageous brevity of her glory?Bare all year, now overnight grown gorgeousas a girl in a trembling hoop skirtpoised to whirl across the ballroom floor,she's at the mercy of the wind astride the river.Six days, maybe eight, or ten at best,before it strips her back to bone.

Is she as flared with joy as she appears,basking in the sunstruck scrutinyof her dazzled fans below,greeting them regally: See me,behold my finery?

                              Or could she bealready brooding on the week aheadwhen she'll be all in tatters, and the bitterseason soon to come, like seasons past,long and arduous and melancholic.She knows the chill she'll feel at the wind's sweep,the way she'll start and shake,helpless and raging at its ravages,seething yet again at the injustice.Was it worth the tedious wait and workfor six meager days of brilliant pink?

Meanwhile in a premonitory breezescatters of blown petals rip looseto flutter down, unwilling, where young girlspluck them from the grass to deck their hair.

Trauma Man

I heard about him on the radio.What a doll!I wish I had one for my very ownto keep in thrall.They said he's just a torso, not all there,but I don't care.

When he's opened up he's quite completewith skin and blood and boneall marvelously neat,every organ where it should be butnot the coils of gut.He's several thousand bucks yet that's a steal

for med schools where they need to operate—carve, extract, reorganize, and sew—on someone less than real.A sorry fate,which no one else would bear without a moanexcept this willing drone.

Praise Trauma Man: thus surgeons learn to heal.Why can't we all have one to see us throughthose moments when we long to wield the knifebut hesitate to scar a human life?You can cut him time and time againand patient Trauma Man will feel no pain—

at least he won't complain.

Christmas Cactus

It thrives on darkness and the year's old age.In spring it squats upon the sill,a sullen plant of stubborn rage,with spiky leaves that lack all force of will.

The solstice nears, and in its showers of light,floods of color flourish, gaudy, loud,all living things obediently bright:the cactus's grim refusal is a shroud.

December's shadows spread like mud.The cactus gulps the gloom, it eats the night,erupts in rushed profusion, flowers like blood.It teaches me to feed on dark's delight.

Then like a Christmas cactus shall I flare:last-minute blood-red blooms against despair.

The Impossible Dream

In my young dreams I droverunaway cars down flights of steps,into the hurling tide, or off steep cliffs.I woke near death, gasping with relief.

Now I dream the same but never wake.The hurtling car negotiates the steps,the cliff, the sea. I pump the brake,grip the wheel, firm my mind, survive,

and drive. Perhaps it's time that's made me bravein dreams at least. But I suspectI've merely lost my dread

and halfway long to throw myself away.Once an ancient woman said to me,You think you die so easy? Wait and see.