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To a Catalpa

by Chris O’Carroll

Most of the year, you look like a buffoon,
Your pods awkwardly long, your outsize leaves
Like oafish hands that gangle from their sleeves.
So when, for one unlikely week in June,
Your air froths festive and your earth is strewn
With blossoms frilled around a color scheme
Of sun-gilt tear tracks, twin streaks gold-on-cream,
Amid fine spattered freckles of maroon,

And fragrance syrup-rich though light as dew,
You startle us with hope we, too, might be
Capable of that moment, or those few,
In which quotidian absurdity
Contrives somehow to conjure or renew
An efflorescence of divinity.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor. His poems have appeared in Barefoot Muse, Big City Lit, Bumbershoot, Measure, Raintown Review, and other print and online journals.

Pat Jones
Published 30 May 2011