Boiled in the small pot
until they disintegrated. Now
a bubbling whirlpool of purple, tiny strings.
Pink roses rise to the surface.
A dish for a baby girl shower?
I dip—sweet, tart.
A ladle in Japan
spooning it over brown garlicky meat?
Such viscous roses! I dip out the pits
with a slotted spoon.
The roses break up, re-form.
How long will we cook over stoves,
watch the long loop of purple sauce
drip back to the resurfacing rose,
taste from the spoon, try to guess at
the deep foreign tang hidden in the fruit?
How long over the stove,
Mostly women but some men, stirring?
***
If everything were very nice, under
a kindly communist God, we each would
get to be eighty, then finis. A spouse
and two children. We are all only
slightly different. No need for doctors,
we are all healthy. Or dentists.
No crime, we all have the same things,
and over the years have grown less covetous.
Why would you want what you already have?
If everything were very nice, gardens would
be beautiful, some would make them their lives.
Others would sing or dance, few would choose words
because the stories are so much the same—
There are the births, those passionate events
and tiny cherished differences, but still… For lunch
you type in your request, the machine presents it.
Ribs with plum sauce? Check. Transparent soup?
Right here. No mess, no errors and no problems.
At eighty, on the bright appointed morning
We’d simply fade to outlines and then vanish.
If only everything were very nice.
***
It is done now, dark and thick and fragrant,
bubbles rise, translucent violet.
The scent of plum fills the house,
drifts out over the summer garden
like a haiku.
I am an ancient poet who taught at TAMU for 47 years, am now Professor Emerita. And I have done volunteer work in a library.