chocolates

these poems are a collection of chocolates,
each one labeled with delightful candor,
coated with a din of life, and inside quiet richness,
offered in a mall of decorated stacks
and well placed seats, whose quiet background
leads the eye to shop the lines of boxes
filled with musty sweets.

a block of city buildings on the shelves,
tall and yellow, thick and red, green along the border,
books of crazy size and color leading to
an intersection with another street.
an architecture caught mid-breath
with surreptitious lines and penciled windows,
curved rectangle facing walls
and shades of azure, gold and red reflected in the sun of dusk,
a lifetime’s work.

their inhabitants must reason in
loose assorted rhythms, blended rhymes,
room for nuance, savory and sweet,
words of sage and reminiscence live in this one,
springtime dancing over there.
here a phrase is upside down,
and turned around, and doesn’t meet, or doesn’t seem to,
then it does! like Escher drawing out a story line.

this journey to the store is just to scout diversity,
many authors, many styles, speaking out.
the mail will soon bring poems whose themes
span pages, to be taken out and savored
one by one.