Monogamy Poem by gershon hepner

Monogamy’s monotony,
more tedious than botany,
for botany brings you quintessence
of snow, with chilly efflorescence
of winter, when the snowdropp hurries
to push its petals through snow flurries,
while with delight attention focuses,
exquisitely on crocuses,
and tulips, daffodils, a host,
and hyacinths, which I love most,
for even though they come much later,
their have a fragrance that is greater.
Botanically, with flaming flowers,
comes April with its kindest showers,
and so in May we have hunami,
the blossoms and the roses balmy;
most precious, too, the fragrant lilac -
at lilac time there’s nothing I lack.
With lilac’s white and purple scent
I still recall the days I spent
in Maytime, thinking that each summer
compared with lilactime's a bummer.
Hydrangeas herald heat, upstarts,
as overblown as blowsy tarts,
and, filling bushes with their blooms,
too pompous in the living rooms.
But when I see the mums and dahlias,
I even love the ones deemed failures,
for they’ve defied the summer heat,
and show us the best way to greet
the dry chill that will soon approach,
when leaves fall down without reproach,
soon after their own show in autumn,
like moments past, you wish you’d caught ‘em,
You cannot, life has got its seasons,
as cyclic as the heart, no reasons.
When I depart this blasted heath
I will not want a floral wreath,
just memories of fresher fragrance
that I enjoyed, like other vagrants,
while living with audacity,
enjoying to capacity
the garden, field and mountain blooms
that decorate God’s outer rooms
which in His world that is so spacious
with flowers He makes look so gracious.
That’s botany, you know, my friend,
variety without an end!



Zoology, though, is a marriage,
whose trap I think I must disparage,
It’s set to make monogamous
a man who wouldn’t shock a mouse,
so men must, in society,
be kept from all variety
of blossoms in a human form,
one couple lifelong in each dorm;
since true love rarely is enduring
most people think that very boring.
I think that we perhaps should learn
from flowers, and should take our turn,
to move each year to brand new places,
renewing love in vitreous vases.
Change lovers, water them, give air,
don’t rape them with our gaze, and stare.
Let’s emulate the flowers, new
tomorrow walk out on the dew,
and pick a rose and make a vow
that we’ll not let the prudes allow
their boring customs more to stale us.
Be happy gals and happy fellahs,
like rosebuds that we gaily gather.
There’s nothing that I think I’d rather
be doing for the rest of time,
except, perhaps, to write my rhyme.

But help me quick, my shirt is torn,
my finger bleeds, a naughty thorn
I wish the roses came without,
has pricked me, and has made me doubt
that I should learn from flowers, maybe
I’ll stay with you some more, my baby;
variety is fine for flora,
but too much makes the heart still sorer.
I’ll hoard you all alone, a miser,
although it's hard, you know how guys are,
for just as flowers have their thorns,
so sensibilities have corns.
Tread easy on my flower-bed,
it’s far too easy, once you’re wed,
to take the fragrance all for granted,
and loveliness the poets chanted,
but there’s variety in one,
and nothing new beneath the sun;
my love’s no flower, she’s a bouquet,
that’s why I’m OK and she’s OK.

Hunami is a Japanese term for admiring blossom, with particular admiration for the fact that blossoms are so evanescent.

6/23/96,1/5/97,6/4/98