It was still there today,
in that scruffy garden by the road.
Taunting me like a happy-face in a graveyard.
It's mid-December in New England.
Tree bones creak in the cold wind,
and withered leaves scratch and scuttle
like rats across the stiff ground.
This is no place for a pansy.
You don't see any daffodils prancing about.
The tulips, the peonies, the roses,
all have made graceful departures.
Not even a lone mum survives,
struggling against the season,
battered but blooming.
But the pansy!
Swaying like a boozy over-the-hill tootsie,
taudry yellow miniskirt, red lipstick smeared,
dancing and laughing too loud
as the band packs up,
and the weary bouncer eyes her from the corner.
She'll get what's coming to her,
after the bars close,
when the cold-hearted lady-killer
slides into town,
painting his crystalline graffiti on windowpanes.
Tommorow morning, creeping along the icy road,
I'll peer out my scraped windshield
and see her lying limp,
as if in a swoon from a passionate embrace.
Finally, it will be over.
Perhaps now death will move on,
lured by easy pickings in another town,
far away from here.