Mock Orange
For Lonnie, in Memoriam
Buried in a shoebox of fading photographs is one
of you, a sun-browned boy
wearing a red, white and blue T-shirt
circled with the words swim-surf-sun-run,
standing under the bowed branches
of the mock orange, staring warily
into the camera, idling for a moment
before you race away to play with your brother
in the yard where I sit twenty years later
watching the sun burn down
behind the hill, the air suddenly heavy
with the sweetness of mock orange.
Looking over my shoulder I find the space
where you stood, the white blossoms
growing luminous in the dusk.
Barely arrived to full bloom, they drop,
one, then two and three together,
onto the darkening lawn.