Smoke rose impatiently
through pearly blossoms,
like the prayers of the saints,
and the tonic of flowers
begged him to overthrow
darker persuasions.
From a faded tulip chair, he
looked up at me and said,
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”
He inhaled the light and fragrant day, and, sitting back, rested mute bones against impossibility.
Michael James Fitzgerald
Though I usually don't, I'd like to offer a little background on this poem.
On Easter morning, March 30, 1986, while driving north on Main Street in Orem, Utah, I saw an old man sitting alone under a blossoming apple tree, smoking a cigarette. He was sitting in a oxidized shellback or tulip chair, those metal lawn chairs common in the 1950s.
A few lines of a poem came to me shortly after that. I've thought about this unfinished poem many times since and felt inspired this year to finish what I started nearly three decades ago.
The allusions are to Revelation 8:3–4 and Luke 24:5.
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