ManicDDaily

 Coat. bought, brought back

It sleeves, collars, pockets itself
as brightly as the birds
of paradise outside
her front door (unthinkable in life before
Florida).  “Here’s my jacket from–”
she says, “where’s that place?” cocking an eye, “you know,
with all the dogs?”
“Katmandu,” I answer knowing both
the jacket and the Katmandu she thinks of (in the ‘80s) and remembering
that same mustard-brown dog who stood
rough-necked, at every other corner, and she says,
“oh yes,–now is that
Nepal?”
and I say, “yes,” and she says, “in the mountains?”
and I nod.  “Beautiful,” we agree, “with a lot
of temples?”
and I wonder as I remember this
myself, whether the next time, she’ll add,
“the place with that earthquake,
right?”

How is it that we lose
knowledge, let it slip between fault lines, behind
cabinets, into the cracks
of our brains, and I don’t mean here the memory
of Katmandu as it was then, a prayer flag
against sky’s blue, but the knowledge that
whatever is here now,
what has been on this earth for centuries, or maybe only as long
as a certain angle of light (my mother’s flowers seen
from her front stoop) may in the next now
be unrecoverable;

and though we can’t expect to see
into the future, no matter
the alarms, surely we might see
what’s here now, not just coat
the skins of things like
a tourist’s jacket, our flags unfolded only
for show and tell–
Katmandu, how can we mourn you so far
from our front doors, we of the eyeless
beaks, fleeting as
flamed petals–

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Very much of a draft (and too long) poem for Magaly Guerrero’s prompt on
Real Toads to write about a flower that’s an animal, or a bird that’s a flower– Magaly asked for short–so sorry!  

Almost there==that is, the end of April, this is poem 29 or 30–

So sad for Nepal. 

Finally, this is not my photo–happy to take it down, in my fatigue don’t mean to infringe a copyright–

Finally, finally, this has been edited since first posting and probably will be more edited!