atl

In one pocket I have hidden chocolates from you
And knives.

Speaking my real thoughts to no one

In bars and at lecterns I have told the truth
Fairly often, but hardly ever to myself.

Patricia Goedicke

I didn’t see you, tall, dark, intense,

with three bouquets of flowers in your hand.

On Walnut and Broad, between the Union League

and the Indian Campsite, you stopped me,

shoving flowers toward my arm.

“At least, I’m not begging,” you cried.

The desperation in your voice

spiraled through my feet while I fumbled the few bucks

you asked for. I wanted those flowers—

iris, ageratum, goldenrod and lilies—

because in desperation

you thought of beauty. I recognized

the truth and human love you acted on,

your despair echoing my own.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

Every fifteen minutes

a patrol car cruises by. I jolt awake

at four a.m. to sirens screeching

and choppers lugging to the hospital heliport

someone who wants to breathe.

The sultry heat leads me

to the window. What matters? This small

square of night sky and two trees

bound by a wide brick wall.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not

Walt Whitman