IF NOT NOW

The temple bell stops but I still hear
the sound coming out of the flowers.
--Basho

She walked down the street
in a state of near bliss
licking a double scoop
of tutti-fruti ice cream.

What could he enjoy as much,
manacled by responsibility?

He thinks of rapture; he dreams
of mailing a letter to himself.

An unseeable and unknowable world:
Snowfall in Patagonia,
the silence he never heard before.

The tolling bell,
the scent of a cluster of calla lilies.

It’s here now: a yahrzeit candle
burning in the rain.

A life he forgot to live.