The Pomegranate

On the tray is a pomegranate and
a pot of decaf. Room service.

Blue Oxford tails
wriggle beneath a rough sweater.

See, this is not desire.
This is the snake taunting.

I won't be able to—I don't know you.
Clever boy, he gets his own pun.

Night air sags over the cricket's
pauses as if stunned

by the sudden inconsequence.
Look on from the banks:

a clump of turtles on a half-submerged
log, sunning themselves. They

do not want the dark water.
They leave the clammy bank to us.

Everywhere are oaks, impervious
to Spanish moss, resurrection fern,

crested woodpeckers. Hundreds
of cypress engendering hundreds

of knees fall over into the river.
A long time ago someone said

knowledge and someone else
wisdom, but that voice

was so lilting and quiet,
the way two women talk

in a garden, and the white lilies
lift their trumpets to listen.

Copyright © 2007 Martha Serpas All rights reserved
from The Dirty Side of the Storm
W. W. Norton
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission