Five Poems by Michael La Bombarda

 

WALKING FOR INSPIRATION 

 

At least you have the pink-red azaleas

To comfort you, slender oak,

Planted by the curbside,

And protected by wrought-iron bars.

Perhaps you’ll grow to be tall and strong,

And some of your cantilevered limbs

Provide a panopy to passing motorists.

We need more trees and more flowers

And more parks in this concrete city,

A landscape of stone, mostly stone

And metal. All these people busy

Around town and the men too afraid

To smell a flower or hug a tree.

I grasp your young bole, and

Clutch it tight. I don’t know

If you are male or female,

But you are at most a teenager.

I grasp you to keep steady.

When I was young I thought

The whole carnival stopped 

When I breathed my last breath.

I wish you to grow until mighty

Like your common epithet.

Only forgetfulness attends me,

My own, and others forgetting

I was alive, and why shouldn’t

They forget me. We are important

To ourselves, and a few others.

Then we die and are forgotten,

As is necessary for others to live.

DOCTOR’S VISIT

 

Rainbow tulips in the garden bed

Around the empty fountain, and several

Sparrows and pigeons on the elm branches.

Surely a madman will interrupt my stolen moments

In Stuyvesant Park. The psychiatrist says

I’m doing fine, and I concur, since I don’t see

Anyone hiding in my closet or lurking stealthily 

Outside my door when I leave my studio

In an eager trance. There seems to be a conspiracy,

Though, of birds of colour in this city, as I never see

Any warblers, swallows, or goldfinch, or even

A blue jay locally. Suddenly I feel sad for no reason

Other than I can’t wear the crown imperial I saw

In Bleecker Street Park the other overcast day.

Harbinger of the return of the bloody English

Royalty stealing American free land in King

George’s revenge, or just a boon from Beauty’s

Palette for everyone to admire and enjoy?

Forget revolutions and Kings and Queens!

Too much blood has stained the purple floppy

Petals of the tulips I see beyond my reach.

A flash of History, a hawk, circles overhead;

I’ll buy myself a cappuccino and a cannoli.

 

STUYVESANT PARK

 

A teenage boy

Dressed in black,

Thin-framed,

Long-haired

Black curls

Around his head.

He has soft brown eyes.

I thought

He was a girl,

And I was attracted

To her.

Two dots

Make a line.

I see what I see

And draw conclusions,

No more.

EXCAVATION

 

As you dig

Through the Earth

Over your lifetime

Through layers

Of sediment,

You will find a fossil

Shaped like a leaf,

A hand,

Pulling you through

The darkest regions

Of time and space,

And  you will find,

You are not even

An imaginable fraction

Of yourself

In this Universe,

Yet you will be happy

Because you are

No more than you thought

Yourself to be, a man,

Or a woman,

Aspiring through knowledge

And experience,

And the cooperation

Of Mother Evolution,

Godhood.

HIGH UP

 

From the waterfall

On the mountain

Falling in the tarn

Where you bathed

To the moment

I realized

You and I

Were once

Those twin rocks

That we sunbathed

On that morning,

Until a silence fell

Lying between us,

As if it were a tree

With many branches,

And later,

Back in the water,

One floating,

One gasping.

Michael La Bombarda is a poet and fiction writer. He has published in many little magazines and in some anthologies published by Low-Tech Press, Autonomedia, the New York Writer’s Coalition, and Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. He has three books of poetry published by Chez Michel Press.