Beauty Aisle

Beauty Aisle

You’d think they were drinking it,
you’d swear they were drinking it,
the way these boys go through shampoo.

So says a woman in the beauty aisle
of the grocery store. Suds in the
mouth, I imagine it. What cleans a part

of us isn’t meant for the whole,
isn’t meant to be ingested. What
cleans you isn’t food. I worry that

the flowering pears outside won’t
stay flowering long enough for me
to get my fill of walking under gardens,

of looking up at white petals. For
how many more days will the flowers
still be flowers, I grab at any information,

pseudo-calculation, if, last year,
there were still petals in the branches
at the end of April, how many storms will

it take before the blossoms are gone
again. I will never tire of this word,
blossom, swoony, soft, full of air and light.

Outside, through the automatic doors,
there are flowering pears in the lot,
enough flowers now to feed me for the year.