The Roses of Hartford
Summer’s arrived.
The neighborhood grandiose with heat,
Sirens wailing at night, all night
Through open windows and doors.
Hell on earth, a woman says on the bus,
Mopping her face.
But it’s hell gussied up with roses,
Tied to stakes, trained to wander the blank
Squares of trellises or to shade
The tenement’s stoop. Bloom-heavy,
They stagger in place, red or yellow,
True to their load.
A bush of pink ones
Holds to the hill overlooking
Where each day at
Line up by the gate to the pool.
Through the chain-link fence,
Anyone can see the pool is dry.
And still the kids keep coming? you ask.
They do, their towels draped over backs
Glossy with sweat
As if any moment some streetwise angel
Might saunter to the spigot and twirl it,
Filling the cracked blue public space
With the long cold spill of plenitude.
By the time you’re talking
To the mayor’s office, you’re hearing
That old saw in your head,
Don’t you know
That the poor won’t be saved, that this
Is not their kingdom?
There’s hell on earth.
There are the roses’ yellows,
And whites, and lavenders, and a red
So red that you could weep.