THE BUBBLE MACHINE

Marooned on a rooftop on Divisadero Street, we launch
our bubble machine with a bucket of sudsy water.

His eyes follow the trajectory, a blizzard of bubbles
swept aloft as magical as the first fireflies of summer
scintillating my front porch.

They look like miniature biospheres, snapping and popping
at will, awakening the eye to rainbow-hues, each one
a shimmering poem, as colorful as any that’s ever been written.

Floating down across the red tile roof they splat on creeping
bougainvillea ivy clinging to a sun-baked brick wall whose
spiny cascading stems and bracts shield small white flowers.

Any momentary climax, as delicate as petals on a paper-white
narcissus almost immediately disappears, destined to remain
a screed of memories in the photographic album of the mind.

Milton P. Ehrlich