Michael Harty

A mockingbird spreads her song
over the shallows like confetti. Minnows
point me upstream, away from the past,
but I drift with the whispered current.

Each gold aster along these banks
footnotes a memory. An embrace
beneath this bridge. Beyond that wall
a terrace with Mexican beer
and flowers to fling at the parade.

How warm those nights, how sweet
the tin cherubs ceiling-hung
in the steamy fragrance of posole.
How dark the eyes, how mysterious the songs
of longing, of half-forgotten home.