Dedicated to John Steinbeck and his 'The Chrysanthemums' (My private reverie at a coffee-shop on a moonlit night)

Elisa waters her Chrysanthemums as I sit in the moon-bathed coffee-shop –
My eyes stretched on the other side of the road: blink and drop.
As I look on farther and deeper,
Past the mud, over the fence, across the road, arrives the tinker.

It was the white road there, and the moon-tainted greystone here,
It was a fence there, and it’s my two by four bed here,
But our eyes still take flight
Like the sharp edged Chrysanthemums shooting up to the stars into the dark night…
Yes, it was night there and it is night here.

You had stretched out your hands to feel the touch of light but I keep it folded,
You had given the Chrysanthemums to him and he had discarded –
You had hidden your face against the white road at the Chrysanthemums drowned in your fears,
But Elisa, he has returned to me now, and
I see him everyday, arms outstretched to give back those shoots of toil and tears;

I want to grab and grip them back, but numb I lie,
The moon has set now, and the soil behind the fence and the Chrysanthemums die.

Elisa, your toil of nourishment I couldn’t plant back,
As I sit scribbling down as Preludes’ “ancient women” against the rack.

The crimson petals now stare at me in painful derision,
Or is it mocking my lifeless vision?
You tried to iron the crease out of your pink dress of desire
And I wear it now as my motley of mire.

A tinker comes to every life and the parody being:
Either he refuses you or you refuse him,
The moon-dimmed greystone ever awaiting the Tinker of the Light,
To regain hope, or till yet again, life rejects life.

I’ll rekindle my candle again as it burns its both ends fine,
I’ll build a sand castle of rootless Chrysanthemums another time,
And auction it again in the market of emancipation…
Till the silent road screams again:

Rejection, rejection, rejection.
©