Lilacs smell of mortuaries. Today I dug them out of my garden and moved them between my home and highway to block the rot of traffic. They will not bloom this spring and the dead will wait until next year to rise. My garden will smell of vegetables, a sharp and acrid odor of life. Next year lilacs will blend a pungent sweetness into traffic’s oily exhaust through a few brief weeks, death and life separated by the width of my home.
Richard Dinges, Jr. lives and works by a pond among trees and grassland, along with his wife, two dogs, three cats, and eight chickens. Old Red Kimono, Poem, Oracle, The River, and Alembic most recently accepted his poems for their publications.
