The Poem in the Middle of Everywhere
by Charlene Langfur
Some days I am exactly here with everything.
Chasing the obvious into the middle of nothing,
swaying like the fan palm trees in the desert wind,
sitting with flowers after the blooming comes,
orange nasturtium, delicate, evanescent lavender
blossoms, intricate, little, leaves that are elegant, true.
How else to know exactly how far I have come?
Past the wars on TV, the tanks and the drones,
the peace in one place, destruction in another one.
Choirs and bombs, money and nothing at all,
a lesbian’s long life, writing poems at dawn,
a lifetime passing in the blink of an eye,
betrayals and love all at the same moment
but here this winter in the desert where I am,
the winter garden on my porch flourishes
as if for the very first time, aloe, fluent, tall,
the tiny purple flowers on heather, giants to the eye.
Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer, an organic gardener with many publications, most recently with poems in Poetry East, Acumen, The Hiram Poetry Review, a short story on the Hudson Valley Writers Guild website, and an essay in Still Point Arts Quarterly. She lives in the California desert.
