i begin wanting to write you a love poem.
for so much time, i have not one to show.
not one made for you to read, anyway.
-
i feel for you feathered fire,
hovering, entwined, falling.
this is where i fail to end and you cease to begin.
-
if we continue to sail paper ships with smudged messages to each other,
will i still i think of you when i am in the rain?
i love no place better than in your arms
-
no home, no room, no ocean.
Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
Billy Collins
” —It was 12:36 in the afternoon. We had left the conference we were at for a lunch break and she wanted a Slurpee. We had walked blocks out of our way to get to the 7-11 and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get back on time. I looked at my watch - 12:37. We finally rounded to corner onto the block with the 7-11. I was relieved: I hate being late. She opened the door a crack, enough to let the cool air conditioning sneak out and tease the small beads of sweat forming on my hairline from the mid-day sun. She looked at me, and gesturing toward the store, she said (as if to keep it a secret from the store itself), “It looks like it’s 3 in the morning in there.” I glanced at my watch again - 12:39. I nodded. Of course it didn’t look like it was 3 in the morning in there. I followed her into the store. I was overcome with a sleepy late-night feeling, as if all of the customers were just stopping by to pick something up as an afterthought, on their way from here to there. The people working there gave off the impression that they were counting down until the next shift began and they could drive home in the early morning mist, or dew, or light - whatever people drive home through early in the morning. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never lived in the suburbs. She got her Slurpee and we walked back out into the summer heat. Her drink looked as if it was sweating in her hand.
Of course it looked like it was 3 in the morning in the 7-11, it always did.
The woman standing near me on the train this morning is dressed like an off duty hooker (in my personal opinion, but who am I to judge?). She wears tight black pants which accentuate her curvaceous figure and high-heeled, mid-calf, pleather (probably) boots with buckles. She has chemically straightened hair with highlights suitable to an Arian California beach babe. That’s not all though, she holds a book titled African Americans: a Concise History. The book is the length of a good novel. It strikes me that perhaps she has just become an African-American woman and is brushing up on her reference reading so as to become a more convincing African-American woman.
Who else is going to be reading that book?
