The First Beautiful Day

Spring slides over the last patch of gray;
somewhere a river is thawing.
My tongue is heavy with flowers.




photograph by Rachel K

Written on the Front Lawn

Each night since you left
the view's been the same:
a blue, empty barn,
the light I left on,
the pushpin of Venus
not budging overhead.





photograph by Rachel K

A Connecticut Christmas

They are graduates all
of the Saint Michael's choirs,
these Cooks and Waterhouses
and Smiths. The carols
swing fast from timid waking -
a musical slumber
these twelve thick months - to Baroque
descants, four-part harmony.
Behind a man I have just met
I am propped on the bathroom door.

This is the year's one day
the glossy piano knows contact.
Dessert has been laid
on the gleaming buffet,
but the choir soldiers on.
Once in a while a neighbor
mouths, "Come, sing," to me
from a rosy couch. "Come, sing."
The voices are careless, sincere.

Weary husbands rock
on the balls of their feet, arms full
of fur coats. Their wives are full too.
The first glass to remember,
the second pretending, the third
to soak up the mess of the others.
I have climbed the stairs
for my notebook. Down in the library
a young tenor has won
the piano bench. The notes

float up, not Christmas at all,
but Journey. The tenor downstairs
looks for me and my flushed cheeks
at the borders,
and I am not there.



photograph by the indomitable Rachel K

Grounded

The car, the cab, the train, the subway, shoes, escalator, hallway.
Two hours later, the whole thing in reverse,
making her way home across the electric night.

A shower brought her back
from where she had been going.
She stepped onto the faded mat,
squeezed her hair into the sink,
entered the dark bedroom.

The socket installed by a dying man
years before she was born,
the ragged cord, the brass lamp,
her damp fingers: Bare arms
(skeleton shrieking blue gray yellow white),
down the dripping leg to wet ankle,
the cold alloy bedframe.

She screamed, a choking sound
she could hardly hear, and fell
like a burning tree to the bed.




photograph by the divine Rachel K.