elegy for Miriam Hershberger

scaffolds race up the walls like ivy

squat Inca-nosed day workers spread pasty mortar

like birthday-cake icing over square cinder blocks



two gleaming Hummers flash past,

devils under their hoods



it’s spring

the yuppies venture out on their decks, arranging furniture



magic sunshine glints on old green bottles in the magic gardens

chaste brick lips portrude among the mosaics

murals busting out all over town



Cambodian girls chatter in Khmer

far from ancestral paddies



hysterical moms from Mexico to Tibet

shepherd bewildered broods across the alien schoolyard



Philly is the city that loves you back, except when it doesn’t



chaste maiden hips on the frontiers

walking, walking -- Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hanoi

young rice shoots sprout in your footsteps,

your laughing footsteps,

o Mennonite daughter of the lunar New Year



clamoring scaffolds rise up to obscure

paint-gleaming murals



demons in the engines jeer

infernal machines accelerate, crush the sparkling green bottles

against the pavement

heedless, insane



apsara smiles in magic gardens

ah that archaic smile!

glittering glass fragments coalesce in

crystal mosaics on the pavement



Philly is the city that loves you back,

except when it doesn’t





bardo



your face frozen in the window

I bring food offerings

to hieratic cats, their old souls

behind ancient eyes



your body entranced in the sacral bed

anointed and unguentine

once we were entwined

under the pyramids, under the sphinx



soul's boat rocking

in dark gelatinous waters

florid multiplex demons

stand at attention



this is not dying; yet it is

this is not a journey; yet it is

your face frozen in the waters

under the pyramids, under the sphinx





stupa



narcolepsy

this drowsiness

laid on thick by winter's

monochromatic brush



take the night train

the catatonic express

nod off

with a head full of snow



there are stupas

at my doorstep

shard upon shard

stone upon stone





monsoon



is this fecundity

or something worse?



a horrorshow

or a ripening?



this ominous outburst,

this sadness in the clouds



prolific, neuronal

luxuriant, intertwining



abrupt, yet not unexpected

the dissolution after the dawn



--Ross Bender