by shoeshine clouds and wreathed  

in a resonant sneeze.  This poem wants  

 

another cup of caffeine  

to take on the headlines again,

 

with state legislatures  

voting mean.  Can I have another  

 

umbrella, please, for this senior citizen  

whose been standing in the sultry heat,  

 

for the woman with the unkempt hair

trying to vote as the rain drains down  

 

her rumpled coat?  This poem smells

of crushed sage from a walk in Spain 

 

and the mountain in North Wales  

I tried to climb when I was twenty.

 

Note to self: avoid rubber-soled boots  

when knee-deep in snow and hiking  

​

with beer-smitten geology students.  

Dear Reader: Don’t underestimate 

 

how much it takes to get perspective  

on the moment you are in. This poem  

 

is a bouquet of yes’s—some of them  

happier than others, such as the yes to

 

marrying my husband at 32.  Not the yes  

to the Oxford grad I met on a London train

 

who was aghast when I told him  

I was still a virgin and asked me back  

 

to a dingy hotel by the station.  

Not his hands like oil slick  

 

on my skin and the stare  

of the receptionist when we arrived,

 

like I was some kidnapped  

teenage bride.  

 

This poem is a roll call on all  

that a poem can’t solve: the people 

 

who furl their tongues so silkily

around a lie, gods of their own slick, 

​

gnarly gardens—the squash and radishes  

sweating in the August sun.  

 

This poem is not the height of the Eiffel Tower  

when you place its pages end-to-end, not  

 

the hotel where I stayed in the Latin Quarter,  

with its bulging walls and motorcycle bar  

 

downstairs.  My sister and I had to pay  

10 centimes to use the bathroom in the hall.

 

This poem is not those centimes

but it could, if required, become  

 

an umbrella, a tiny and limber

roof of breath

 

held over your soft  

and dimpled head. 

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