I sniff after the sparrow and the spaniel, flitting around,
barking, digging up the dirt: how could I not be
at one with them? But I'm a spendthrift too, rummaging about

old sport coats, selecting a style, a clash of styles—
in a private moment trying to decide who I am today by trying on
something discarded, something nobody treasured—

I think I want everyone and everything to be loved so much
I get dour, chastising, dark, and sometimes hate
so much I can't go for a stroll without recycling the moment

they dropped acid on my palm, the thousand ways I could ease
their demise—dipping them into a river of invective
that seems futile and enticing—whether it’s the Secretary of State

or a species of white shirts and thin black ties who exude smugness,
who quote from the bible as if it were the Bible. It's like having an affair—
they all end badly, don't they?—thereby the passion flies out of me

like an open window in February: take the heat, world,
disperse it before I undress another thought.

My first roses brought me to my senses.
All my furies, I launched them like paper boats 
in the algaed pond behind my house. 

First they were pale, then peach and blood red.
You could be merciless trimming them back.
You could be merciless and I needed that.

Emerald green with crimson tips,
these were no crowns of thorns.
They would not portend nor intimate.

But if you fed them they'd branch out:
two generations in a single summer.
One had a scent of fruit & violet, the other

blazed up, a flotilla of lips on the lawn.

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Copyright © 2011 by Ira Sadoff. Used with permission of the author.