INSTEAD

INSTEAD

   susan ambrosino

Instead,

hear the bell ringing bird song.

See the sun shine in grass blades

from deepest dark to the sunniest open spot.

Notice butterfly bush leaves hanging in every direction,

360 degrees covered in the space of one small bush.

Watch roses carouse flamboyant,

the trumpet vine relentlessly climbing your arbor

summer after summer

dripping orange amazements at your feet.

It was all there before you looked,

will remain when you turn away

to dream your life is a great sea,

you a wave moving across it,

the boats of each day passing

as they cut through the swell of you,

and are gone,

to dream you're a hurricane,

a big, heaving wind,

balancing over your head everyone you love,

everything you own,

on an eight foot square section of stockade fence

your wind blowing, your rain lashing.

You still have a 1960’s cylindrical metal box

with bright neon daisy flowers.

You continue to keep it.

It continues to survive your need

to throw out the old

bring in the new.

There’s always something that remains.