Banana Tree

Your black car arrives,

shutters creak across Bordeaux,

I am extracted from my hideout

as if I offed a communist

or penned a verboten poem.

She unfurls a lengthy leaf,

supposes I am doing the same;

She has sparse imagination

and even less experience,

but she is in touch with the force.

She can’t read The Eel Book,

or recognize the Norse, Frisian,

or English words for “love”;

She doesn’t make second guesses

while outgrowing her own footprint;

doesn’t fear propagating new pups

where the soil is fertile.

She has never tasted your salt

or muttered “take me”

in trust of another banana tree.

She sees me depart and sees me arrive

in the rickshaws of Singh Sahib,

but she does not comprehend the holi powder

ground from a vibrant love,

bursting in shockwaves from the drum

that beats between my thighs.

6 June

A tidy apartment, with rose and sleeping dog