Floating Gardens
        —in memory of my brother Kevin

Just out of reach, overhead
and a few feet to the right
or left, the roses climb
their stalks into the desert

sun, the lilies sway
against themselves for the drops
of water hoarded from rain
so many millennia back

when the Sahara first turned
savannah into sand. The sky
was filling up with vision
that made him wonder

if this were the first or last
stages of delirium, his thirst
curling in on itself, the body's
conduits stoic and insistent

against all evidence. Let
the brain's synapses argue
death as pleasure principle
no matter how much stubborn

memory refused to yield. He
wondered what melodramatic gesture
was better than this, solid roots
and stems right at his fingertips.

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Copyright © 2012 James Doyle All rights reserved
from The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water
Accents Publishing
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission