Queen Anne in the Maple Leaves

Flat, slipping, shifting, veined-and-point-edged
sheets of green – breezing in the June-lush branches –
sheaves of maple leaves outside my New York City

window – seen beyond a Queen Anne doll

and slats of wooden screen – plant-life nestling

against itself – so insouciantly smoothly, drifting

softly and just sentiently: at least I’d like to think so:

find some commonality in sense of touch between
these vegetable tissues’ skin and mine: their
covered sap and my dark biologically guarded heart.
Today I was to play as if I were on some deserted
Caribbean island: sunning in the gloriously
inner-lit environs of my secret palace with no more
to fashion out of my imagination than my passion,

whim or appetite decreed. But virtually every friend
who writhes in a considerable stress, distress
or need has phoned me, one by one, as if to seek
a dispensation from reality. Perhaps I ought to send
them to my window sill, to Queen Anne in her
royal bower, flowering iconically: her stance like hope.
She doesn’t look as if she’d grope for answers.

.