J. J. Steinfeld

Long-Ago Flowers

There is a poem I forgot to write
it must be nine, ten years ago
when animals spoke to me
and trees and rocks
were able to growl
and taunt like some
stunning amalgam of
animate and inanimate.

But if I could run faster
than the speed of light
and return to that time
nine, ten years ago
I would steal the poem
from myself
stick it in my back pocket
perhaps pick a bouquet
of long-ago flowers
and hurry back
to what passes
as today.

Life on Another Planet

a man with a face so mysterious
in its contours and overpowering beauty
it made both women and men
wonder about the prospect of love
a decent man but seemingly without a history
worth mentioning, an undisturbed past,
who sat cross-legged on his lawn
in an unexpected light snowfall of late autumn
and waited “for their words of instruction”
that, at least, is what he said to neighbours
forward enough to touch his shoulder
and ask why he was sitting cross-legged
in an unexpected light snowfall of late autumn

the house was sold during a cold winter’s day
and before the spring thaw
a new family moved in
too thin wife, three sad-eyed children,
and a husband whose face
was misshapen but as mysterious
as the man’s whose face of overpowering beauty
made both women and men
wonder about the prospect of love
and who is now part of the neighbourhood lore
as having sat cross-legged on his lawn
until he received urgent words of instruction
and vanished like the passing of autumn