i told her it was her voice or the way she wore a summer dress
or i liked the way she made the coffee not too weak,
the beans ground fresh

what i really wanted to describe was how she smelled:
a tangerine scrubbed smooth, a little tree under the moonlight
but we don’t have words for that

i walked out into the garden last night:
now it’s mid-may and the hippies have been gone since
july but their garlic lives on, kale has gone to seed,
summer creeps in bringing mint and lemon balm

dandelions linger here and there and i only want to eat tangerines!

i never had a dandelion sandwich, like my grandmother did in 1917
world war one, tea and cigarettes--sixty years before her garden
was tilled--long before i was a gardener

she would drink tea and wine and smoke menthols
and i told her she looked pretty even when she didn’t

i went upstairs to her door this morning bearing a dandelion
because i couldn’t find a buttercup, didn’t hear beans grinding.
then woke up to see a stringy, washed-out man, dirty and high
confused, like a startled possum--instead of running him over,
i took my flower, walked back down to the garden
picked some mint for my tea.

she left without saying goodbye...
i understand, though: it was winter, and the garden was
dead, frosted over, nothing left for her to pick here
i had to stay behind and tend the garlic.

i give her twice-weekly reports while she sits
in bed and reads my stories, cozy a thousand miles
away

i raved on then this afternoon about dandelions, and
hippies, and the strange man upstairs, and finally
the smell of tangerines.

i think she heard me smile when she said,
you’re a sweet mango

Poetry Magazine