Throughout the Morning, Early, Early

 Throughout the Morning, Early, Early

After 'Miss Olson'

1952

tempera on panel 

Throughout the morning early, early

and as coffee has no choices

or solutions in it all, cooling

how it goes to almost unsippable

to gulpable in the December room

nearly all to once - how the tip

of the fuzzy tongue burned

impatient for the cooling delay

is lately numb to the water forced through

the ground to almost powder beans

(depending on your temerity) (your

need) with the start of the coldest

water brought up to the hottest

the both you can muster heat

the last is almost obligatory a

clean-your-plate-before-you-

leave morality because someone

somewhere is thirsty.  Keep it

at least briefly, on a first sip

meeting.  Don't be bored or force

the kiss.  Imagine that all night

you have been stoking

the coals and roasting the opening

of these beans and then broken them and sifted them

between the mesh and strain

and forced them

but only sweetly only ever sweetly

into such a being

sickbed

 

sickbed 

our bed 

shrinks from the soot

and hapless odors

holds us close

                            Elizabeth Bishop

                            Varick Street

this absence is anticipated 

the way waiting out her dying 

seems the least discrete: pee

breaks, creaking number three

stairs and in between frictions

of released (even after being

so sneaky) cedar floor suites

(the one that seems

to be breathed like a swisher

sweet) on our way to relieve

ourselves which really means

making room for more ease

sudden gone the bedpan takes on

because why not we're going so

don't waste a trip the whisper

squirt of disinfectant the one healthy

breath the one noise that will

come back afterwards the gesture

of holding one's own over 

the mostly wiped away sick

how some smells immobilize

and then go on into the future

the way sounds do when you're through

i want to go with you but first i want to

press my full weight on every board

and stair rub i want to flush the toilet

every time and not to have to 

wait not to have to tiptoe back

to your bed where you're sleeping

the last of your morphine off 

the twitch in your cheeks come to

mean like some eyelid on a coma-

tose invalid how some noise has

got through it's like a breakthrough

like wading to the water spewed

with ivy spewed with alder spewed

with a whole clean-up crew i want

to get to you then by instinct 

like bats do switching frequency easy

drawing the sheets back after

they arrive and take you and make you

clean again while I sit and try 

to doze and soak (or want to but don't)

in the room that almost instantly

starts reclaiming for itself some of

what it was before any of us came

rearranged made a life then vacated

like weight either lost gradually or 

stropped down eventually longing

to the flip of the switch

I Imagine She Kept/Dolls

 

 Imagine She Kept/Dolls

Where are the dolls who loved me so,

when I was young?

                            Elizabeth Bishop

Sweet as she was told she was,

the gnawed off fingers

of the doll was all she could see

herself being

told she needed for Christmas.

Each piece of clothing

sewn together again

and again after all

her previous nights of keeping

the dark inside

her open eyes.  She learned first

nights if she kept her

propped in the corner above the edge

of the pillow 

her eyes would stay

open and she would swallow

in the ways only dolls know

how to: all the dropped 

acorns on the roof all the creeping

between the walls and the outside

night.  She'd been through

the mill her elders would say but never

to her which meant only

that she was battle

field commissioned and ready

in her reliable eye (one socket

stuffed with cotton she'd change

to keep her near new one clear

pinched from some catalogue

ordered do-dad or aspirin

bottle, a smidge to fill

the hollow) and they made their way

into the land of nod and over

the counterpane and they kept

their blood and porcelain hand,

fingers crimped fingers broke and worn

to nubs up against the mouth

and try to 'keep still, keep very

very still, or we'll both go down

into it.  Vigil is kept

in such trust funds.  By daytime,

when Doll was tired and laid out straight

as the dead in the middle of the pillow,

a content corpse who was revived

by suppertime, propped in the corner

before dark walked in 

often unannounced as a hollow swallow

she'd be there to see when her mistress 

walked in without (she was not

allowed when kerosene

was thin) benefit of light.

 

A Requiem

 

A  Requiem

Remoteness is its own secret.

                                W. S. Merwin

                                "The Wilderness"

A requiem is a sung elegy, it

is a refrain, and so

because it is song 

it is a way

of staying somehow relevant

at this exact circumstance

like tide does, for hours if you're watching 

or even

if you're not and how that kind

of song or some release of it at least 

seems deepest at being

repeated or feinting away

after the whole of life of all it was 

offered and tentative or not 

there was some reach some

temptation before saying no but

not wanting to and come away an octave

lower though not always keener

if you can forgive under the light

of it, the finally coming undone of it.