Imitation #5: Donovan Acuna

Poem of the Day: April Inventory

The green catalpa tree has turned

All white; the cherry blooms once more.

In one whole year I haven’t learned

A blessed thing they pay you for.

The blossoms snow down in my hair;

The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.

The sleek, expensive girls I teach,

Younger and pinker every year,

Bloom gradually out of reach.

The pear tree lets its petals drop

Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now

I have to nudge myself to stare.

This year they smile and mind me how

My teeth are falling with my hair.

In thirty years I may not get

Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,

I made myself a little list

Of all the things I’d ought to know,

Then told my parents, analyst,

And everyone who’s trusted me

I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about

A book or memorized one plot.

Or found a mind I did not doubt.

I learned one date. And then forgot.

And one by one the solid scholars

Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.

I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;

One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.

Lacking a source-book or promotions,

I showed one child the colors of

A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,

To bark back, loosen love and crying;

To ease my woman so she came,

To ease an old man who was dying.

I have not learned how often I

Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie

Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;

That my equivocating eye

Loves only by my body’s hunger;

That I have forces, true to feel,

Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority

And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,

My eyes in spectacles shall see

These trees procure and spend their leaves.

There is a value underneath

The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,

We shall afford our costly seasons;

There is a gentleness survives

That will outspeak and has its reasons.

There is a loveliness exists,

Preserves us, not for specialists.

W.D. Snodgrass

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                        Changes in April

The trees transform throughout the year.

Those leaves that were once green and lively.

Those limbs that were once home to avian

look like flowerbeds in the sky.

Tulips emerge from every twig.

All white petals with accenting pinks.

The bark looks like canvas nature’s

painting on, that’s only seasonally shown.

The trees are far more complex than I am.

They’re taller broader and older.

I have no clue if they might be smarter.

I do know they get bigger each year.

Or maybe I get more humbled.

It’s not they’re size but placement

that bewilders me. Mountains and high up

places I wish I could roam are their home.

The friends I knew when I was younger

have grown so much by now most, I am sure.

This year they smile and remind me how

everything used to be when they lived

next to me. I smiled liked I cared.

At point that was true but no longer.

I had to nudge myself to stare at them.

I had to nudge myself to respond.

My teeth were feigning sincerity

my feet were breathing their destination.

My feet soon got their wish were home-bound.

On the way I stopped and admired

all the beauty of the trees and my

fading memories. And the simplicity.