Another Melon Day

Another melon day –
focus gone translucently
astray – warm and strange
and fat – kept on the vine
by nascent summer

misaligning with surreal
collective memories
of monasteries full
of chanting monks –
humid with their breath

and modal melodies –
and all the blowsy
incense-funk and rote
of abstract prayer: although
it’s New York City air

we might be somewhere
other than we are: well, no,
we’re here all right: Manhattan
is the Universe’s sacristy
as we bear down on this

last day of May: en route
to its wet final night:
full of melancholic
holy melon light and its
peculiarly sweet delight.


.