garden state

In a garden state it’s easy
to mistake the referee’s whistle
for a common bird’s shrill conversation.
Mothers pass for wardens, and
lascivious shopkeepers lounge
like lizards in the tropical sun.

A writer of fiction
gets drawn into this country
too quickly, too permanently

-- it must be the tang of lies
intermingling with the salt-and-water
of humanity. A smell that
gropes me, almost like love,
underneath my ribcage; a smell
that blooms like a wanton flower,
touches me like an addiction.

I am amazed at the variety
of hues created, so simply,
by the summation of all
our white lies.

The architect of truth who wanders
with an aimless purpose down highways
is both an ally and an opponent,
someone to believe in--or else.

The foliage he leaves behind
covers more than nakedness.
Like duckweed on lake surfaces
it is an enduringly lovely apparition.

This beauty withstands Time,
the ravages of monsoon tantrums
and the violence of a single season
that refuses to be ousted.

Nothing withers,
or curls up like a bad sentence,
trembles like a poem acknowledging its end.
In the beating sunniness we forget that

nothing lasts forever.