Lines I read twice

Lines I read twice

Lines I read twice and then twice

again like it's nothing but time's smile

in the rising moon.  It's morning.  It's still

dark.  For two days now I've made bad

coffee.  But it wakes me the way this 

wakes me: If the unbearable were not weightless

we might yet buckle under the grief of what

hasn't changed yet.  I've taken up with Jane

Hirshfield again.  I want to deserve a poet

like her I want to kiss her on her hands

and her cheek and maybe she on mine.

I want to know we both look up because

we all do anyway and at the same going 

and arriving sun and moon and stars and rain.

It's all quite simple.  We age and the dust

falls and we wait for months without seeing

the need to wipe it away.  Is this neglect? Slutty

housekeeping?  Or sitting down with hot

bad coffee and drinking it regardless straight up

not because we're a martyr, but because maybe

we've just had some bad news and we don't quite

know what to do with it.  See?  We swallow

what we put in our mouth.  We read it as it slides

down our throat, as it dremels our esophagus

deep enough in the muscle so that every bit of what

we eat will groan, will groan until we sing.

*Jane Hirshfield

Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station and

a Full Moon over the Gulf of Mexico and All Its Invisible Fishes