The woman who opens the door & Mid-March riot in Beacon Hill Park
by Glen Sorestad
[ poetry - february 06 ]
The woman who opens the door
The door opens, drags me from the cold
into stale smoke warmth, an assault like
a late night blues bar, smoke trapped
since the first Virginia leaves burned.
The landlady, a shabby spectre, is
wrapped in roll-your-own fumes.
Smoke leaks from her like blood,
stained fingers trailing signals.
From the sanctuary of her cloud
she coughs me into the hallway, shuts
the door behind me like jaws. I am
in her lair, eyes assailed by the reek
that will never leave her or this house.
She rasps my arrival up the staircase
for my friend, then turns to her TV
and her smoke. I wait. Like death.
Mid-March riot in Beacon Hill Park
Randy rhododendrons are mounting
an insurgence for the viewer's eye,
flaunting pompoms flushed with spring.
Daffy in a dazzle of sun, daffodils
nod and nudge the over-scented
heady hyacinths to the sidelines,
toss brazen yellow like lamplight coquettes.
Camelias jostle for prime time,
heaving pungent sighs; antsy azaleas
shimmer like sequinned dancers.
Off by itself the magnolia bares all,
its limbs lurid as over-sexed orchids.
In the annual beds primulas primp
and pansies perk in bluesy purpleness,
winking shamelessly at passer-by.
Tulips, fresh from their upward tunnelling,
thrust their stalks and wave their buds,
frantic to overshadow their usurper neighbours.
Blumen, blumen, blumen - a floral riot
rolls through Beacon Hill Park, look
where you will - bursts of bloom leap
from behind gnarled trunks, petals
poke their faces from rocks and grass.
March and the park is crazed with spring.
