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.

This--Somewhat After Williams

 

This--

            ---Somewhat After Williams 

(It was restful, learning nothing necessary.

                                    Gwendolyn Brooks)

This

        is just to say:     boats

                    whose bows are

                            mounted

                        in the cove

                            grass and still

                                    aimed out

        at the mouth

        will rise with

                    every tide will fall, will

                                empty of

                                    everything

                                            but night

                                                sky, still

                                                    float and take you on

(forgive me)

                                    any wave 

                                            you care or care not to

                                                                           crest

Of Palimpsests

 

Of Palimpsests

(considering Wyeth's "Winter")

Of course I judge a book

by its cover of course I do

by its weight of paper

or skin or rag picked linen

I'm telling you its good news

to know this: it takes

three hundred lambs

to make one Guttenberg

Bible.  I'm saying lambs--I mean

sheep but I want you to

know the word is worth

what's been given up

as flesh to bear it.  Tell me--

when you touch the daily

news and let it give you your quick

open-port fix and then let it

lie: compost: hearth: cat-

litter lining, it's not the same

as taking into your mouth 

the words you're touching 

like you want

a lover to

touch you:

hover

above the spine and thumb-run

it top to coccyx and spread

broad as split birds rendering

their song when you open

their cage of bones

and, hammer and felt, tune

each pore to sing

the good news to celebrate

the talent it takes to make

every listener rise up 

whites of eyes alive 

and shudder long long long 

beyond the song's obvious

remorse.  Of course.  Of course

I judge a book

by its cover, lover.  And too

her paper or otherwise

made pages: pulp of once mulberry

(and oh, those silk worms 

have their own spin on this

metaphor) or once pulp

of Sherwood, or relic shroud

of Saints, or, and dear this will

cost you: lambs, secretly 

undressed and caressed, care-

                                            ssed

so tenderly the raw is

what's rubbed down rubbed clean so

the only thing it can bear

the only thing it can bare

the only thing it can bair

is the word... 

only when then you double the e

and only then when you double

the e

so climbing the stairs I tell myself

i'm no good

at word games and play

at being unafraid

in my own 

house and i say things

like Crusoe

wants to be (i can't see

letters in my head and that

will be painfully

obvious when this is

finished) rescue

an almost anagram

but it's missing the crucial

O (and it needs its e

doubled) 

could be it all comes

to the one moment

before being

surprised how looking down

long enough means to miss

the ship sailing by

and you're left to

it for another 30 aught,

ought? you, scanning 

the blank horizon

 a vail alive