Valentine To Joe In Vietnam

Up the ruffled shirts
of the red pomegranate flowers
the sweet fingers
of the bees you know
what’s happening.

How we all want to germinate
in some imaginary country
that sounds like this language
in some faces so different
we may be lost again.

A sound I hear sometimes
sitting among the silences and
swoosh of passing planes and dogs
it could be an insect or a bird dying
or all that travels coming home to me.