Readers,
sorry for last week’s omission; I was too busy consuming intoxicants
to really think about poetry, or operate a computer for that matter.
I’ve arrived. I’ll be in South Africa all summer, and hopefully keep
to our weekly schedule. This poem, which I’m posting from the
Johannesburg airport, should explain my plans in all relevant detail.
TRAVEL PLANS
The pepper tree spilled round us from its source,
and took a lumpish this-way, that-way course,
while dangling hopeful sprays of cinnabar.
You couldn’t rest against the grizzled trunk;
its bulby hump and craggy, knurled scar
forced you to lean your weight on me instead.
The two of us were just a little drunk,
and sipped the sun-warmed wine to make us bold.
“I’d like to go to Mexico,” you said,
“with you, someday, before were too damn old,”
while in the sky an airplane’s vapor trail
politely licked its seal across the sun.
We saw the spreading, tantalizing tail,
and watched it matter-of-factly come undone.
-Leslie Monsour
