Why can’t there be flowers in my poems,
why can’t there be birds,
why can’t there be bees.
Why not a column of mountains
ranging down a column of words?
Where is Yeat’s bee-loud glade,
William’s greeny asphodel.
Where are Steven’s Key West palms
or Mary Olivers’ ‘Wild Geese.’
In my neighborhood where I walk
there are streets full of absence.
On Fox Hollow Lane there are no foxes.
On Red Oak Way the oaks are long gone.
There are holes in my world
shaped like these natural things.
Detached from my body’s experience
they ache like severed phantom limbs,
reminding me of what was but isn’t there.
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William Butler Yeats – ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
William Carlos Williams – ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower’
Wallace Stevens – inspired by Key West, Florida
Mary Oliver – ‘Wild Geese’