What shall we do?

 

I remember my neighborhood,

The Italians and Poles who loved

Grapes and chickens and gooseberries

And kids playing in the street,

And colored eggs, and spring,

And the long days of summer.

I remember Him calling to me,

"Come here, Johnny,"

With his farmer's finger, with a frosty-purple

Mound of fresh-picked grapes on a plate,

With a dandelion bouquet on the side.

"Here.  Give these to your mother."

"Sure."

 

Sure, there were a few left when I

Walked in the house with the plate,

The love grapes.

The grapes of love.

The love in the grapes.

The love on the plate.

The love in the man.

The love in the world.

The moral world.

The dream world.

The world of the moral, of the love, of the dream,

Of my lover and eye,

Her eye and my eye.

Our dream.

Her love, my love.

The love.

The love of the dream.

 

        Copyright 1968, John Manimas Medeiros,

        From Handmade Poems, 1968