At the poetry salon, a potent perfume
assails the front room. Death by patchouli!
Unbidden tears barrel down my feverish cheeks
while Alan reads his offering: I carved
a fragile bird from balsa. How long will it last?
A raucous wheeze erupts from my throat.
Dan shifts in his chair. Jenny opens a tin;
miracle mints rattle like the relics of saints.
Dorothy’s black cat Natasha nuzzles my leg
to assure me her dander is blameless.
I think of Keats, his short life a season of mists.
His TB, the terrible cough. My symptoms brief,
yet will my poems continue to bloom
like that Grecian urn, or the poppies’ fume?