once the magnolia has blossomed

Ed Roberson

Once the magnolia blossoms,
the descending shadow of the petals
stains the street

with the brown footprint leaving,
where it has stepped in itself,

a track
walked in its own being flesh
gone as to excrement —

spring, in tomorrow’s rain, comes
a hose-down of the scene as
of an annual
murder,

the fallen petal
of a sparrow

no one had kept an eye on except
the peregrine
from the Methodist church tower.

A hose-down as hope
this has to do with something

about the plant cycle
of sublime season done not sacrifice

to some stoned possession for blood
spent on the street,

and so much lost you’d think
beauty had left a lesson
more than more is there to ask for.

When I worked in the steel mill the ceiling crane dropped a bolt at my feet the way the cat leaves his catch on the doorstep for me to step over it a bolt thick as a sparrow: the gift of it: it didn't easy as eggshell crack my skull. Walking underneath the el's same bridge superstructure when i first arrived in Chicago this is what I thought of a falling bolt, having to give up my cats and not be mad if the whole thing falls off track aimed at me. Buildings straight up from the street tall slough off their "Falling Ice," stand-up sidewalk signs like it's nothing. Buildings the sparrow's slam into, fall from— watched from the window desks— mistaking light for the sky, land up here. The cats probably have been put to sleep by age by now. No blame.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd...) riding the bullet train the view passes by so fast it is either a blur they say or —like night lightning strobes the raindrops to a stop in midair in that soundless moment— maybe from the train you can glimpse waiting there one of those famous petals stopped still in midair holding its wave to you in place. write us and tell us if this is so.

Whose Sleeves: American Tagasode

your shape is in the robe worn or not
a roominess of you folds into its cloth

a sachet in the drawer from which the air
of the place was taken fixed of you’re here

the smell has temperature and space
the wider warmth that buttered popcorn tastes

and not you it folds into a time’s clot
a sachet in a drawer personage of its own still you

I have to wear a bus to Rikers Island with
opaque tears up to my neck to get in to see you

in your two inch thick glass robe I have to imagine
you naked under to place my hand saying

I miss you against you where I can’t touch and love
has to break across insulating space still warm

I have to stand my day in the folding up put away
given you as time with you. I smell I need you on my clothes

I smell gunfire folded in to every turn
the city’s track laps into its hands on race

then files away not guilty I smell the drawers
of the records they keep folded away from stands taken

away distance doesn’t dissipate
the space between the bullet holes in you in me folded

you are the map I have to sleep with in my pocket to be sure
I know how to get out of here

your shape is in the robe the sharp creases
of its fold when you wore it blocked into

the counterpoint around you that even
folded stood you out to me that they couldn’t

see you that one day they would shoot
always folded into the robe you wore

gun or not phone mistaken or empty handed innocent
or not there is this fold on itself we sleep in

in the fabric
of this country’s culture

Ed Roberson

2019

Poems

once the magnolia has blossomed

More by Ed Roberson

On the Sparrow: No Blame

Nolan,

Whose Sleeves: American Tagasode

poets.org

academy of american poets

national poetry month

american poets

Poems

once the magnolia has blossomed

Newsletter Sign Up

Support Us

Follow Us