In Bloom (ghazal)

I’ll be honest: my favorite season is summer in gratifying bloom.

Years pass by and still, my skin shines, neverending bloom.

Hands, hands, hands! Have you heard? AI still can’t draw ‘em, but

my little sister traces her hand into a bouquet in wild-flowering bloom.

I have too many fingers again—ten of them. All of them advise me

while the night, blinking slowly in the dawn, goes out swinging: Bloom!

Honey, I’ve seen snowflakes you couldn’t even dream of. Every ridge

different, a sky full of partial snowflakes caught in unfulfilling bloom.

These days, daffodils are flashing their hearts at us in February. Did you

ever imagine watching the snow lather the fields & their sleeping bloom?

My favorite word is darling, because every ghazal is a love poem & this one

is for them, sipping chai in the kitchen, beards painted in glittering bloom.

I’ll break the trend; this couplet will be short, succinct like I’m trying

to describe London at night: lovely, but way past its drowning bloom.

And I love you because it’s my natural state of being. I lied two couplets ago;

this one is for you & me & art galleries & grocery stores, all in galloping bloom.

Gallery: my hand in yours, on the stem of a daisy, raising from the stem

of a mug. Let’s count the ways. Come winter: eyes on me in singing bloom.

Galloping: sometimes I’m not a person but a body. Have you ever

noticed I can’t draw hands? I am all coincidences in sweet, sharpening bloom.