The Poetic Mouse

A Place in a Garden

A half-tone shaman leaned against the grey gate
of an ancient fence he'd conjured
and, wielding hoodoo like an axe, dreamed
himself in Alabama when magnolias bloom.

He had never been in Alabama and wanted less
to be there than here, leaning on a voodoo gate...

but to see a magnolia open when its time came
to see the brash flower surrender its inhibition

to watch the petals of a pale magnolia turning sepia
in the white-hot glare of Alabama

to live, perhaps an instant after leaning here
and wishing here to watch a white magnolia
blooming in Mobile (where magnolias flourish)

...a magical vision conjured in the afternoon
of a pretended garden somewhere not in the Alabama
where magnolias die.