digital collage: ralph murre
Lilacs
by Susan M. Firer
Before his doctor cut into
his
7th cervical
disk,
like an old Swede’s goat he
clumped
climbed the black garage
roof next door
thump thump to throw
down on me the lightest,
most
fragrant bunches of
lilacs. I lusted
for the lilacs, the drunk
lilacs, the purple
flabellum,
spodumene, sumptuous
benedictional lilacs,
the Nerudian excessive
lilacs.
Neruda’s desk came to him
from a wave
off Isla Negra. “Matilde! Matilde!
My desk! My desk!” he yelled,
spotting the wood in the
ocean.
Together Matilde and Neruda
“went down to the beach and
sat
on the sand, waiting for a
wave
to wash up the wood….”
Neruda placed the wood
ocean view
in front of a window and
placed
a photo of young Whitman on
it &
a photo of old Whitman on
it.
How Whitman loved
lilacs. You can
smell lilacs when you read
Whitman.
Breathing lilacs our house
falls dark
around us, drops like night
clothing
days’ faces. Convalescent hearted
lilac pilgrims cannot stop
breathing
the wet dark lilac nights.
Put a bed of lilacs down
and I will meet you. We will not sleep.
Friends all over are
falling.
There are so many ways to
fall.
Lilacs offer their
transfusions.
In the Houghton Mifflin New
College Edition of AMERICAN
HERITAGE
DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE, on page 757
(like/limb),
they show photos of the
perfectly-postured
lily & the very
well-behaved lily
of the valley. What about lilacs? I write
the editors. What about scratch & sniff lilacs?
All over late May, lilacs
like burglars
surround outbuildings,
& houses, & hospitals,
& bus stops.
(On your way to your
morning
bus, if you stop to pick
Gabriel’s lilacs,
you will miss your bus.)
Lilacs heal lovers’
quarrels, and I swear they
floated
the ship from Singapore
anchored outside our
Memorial
Day lake breakwater,
making the huge ship look
like a ghost ship,
floating on lilac
water. You
already know a lot about a
girl
if you see her carrying a
sprig of lilacs,
if she tucks a sprig in her
hair,
if she bathes in an evening
tub
full of lilacs and water.
Night commendatory lilacs
brush
the windows with lavender
stars
of fragrance. Dirigibles
of lilacs cover us
beautifully
as a garden’s bell cloche.
I raise my lilac scratched
arms
for the mammogram lady.
She arranges my breasts on
her
just spray cleaned plastic
plate
like cut flowers. I believe in evening
she might be giving a
formal dinner.
So much is conjecture,
subjective, history.
In the Downer Theatre
yellow-starred,
emerald-green-tiled ticket
booth,
the ticket seller sits like
a fortune
teller. She has put a wavy-script sign
in her window. It reads: HOLD ON
TO YOUR MONEY OR IT WILL
BLOW AWAY.
It should read: LILACS ARE
ALWAYS
LOVELY. They sign pleasure (On our
dark, night living
room floor, he surrounds me
with lilacs
& whispers, “Now you
mustn’t move).
Tulips & pumpkins trip
me.
I feel misplaced as poodles
in Lake
Michigan . Poodles in Lake Michigan !
My mother told me I was
mailed to earth
in an envelope of lilacs,
there is not one reason to
disbelieve her.
In lilac days, my mouth
full
of ripe, yellow starfruit,
I swallow and listen to the
already almost
lilium & tomatoes &
delphiniums &
the always too brief
flowering lilacs.
In the dark I sneak
out on the soft, moon shine
yarrow-
yellow-caterpillar like
seed softened
sidewalks. I stand pelted by soft
green maple seed wings that
helix fall
wind whip to earth. (In sunlight
the children will split
& wear
on their noses the same
winged seeds.)
I stand in the ample
lilacs, the only flower
with enough
fragrance to convert
everyone
in the city to crime.
Dorothy visited the Emerald City
I surrender myself to the
unrestrained
wash rabble lilacs,
the windy caravan of
lilacs,
the narcoleptic steambath
invitation of lilacs.
~ first published in The Iowa Review
