The lintel of my door declares
Timor mortis conturbat me,
But only for display. Inside,
The folks are busy brewing tea
And snacking on what Christmas left
Behind—dry turkey sandwiches
And lebkuchen. Eggnog is not
A morning-after sort of thing.
Today's the day we roll our eyes
And smirk, superior, then betray,
And throw the calendar away.
this appeared in Staple
It isn't that the oranges tasted better
or that the dust that fell across the shafts
of morning sun were something more than dirt.
We're made of motes here too, and here the sky
changes for eve, changes for morning. Though
the grass was growing when the sword was sheathed,
we are not missing all of Paradise.
I've told the story now so many times
I don't think I remember how it happened,
when I woke up with that stitch in my side
and she alongside. It still makes a good story.
What I do remember is how we made
the lamb eat avocados. Who would think
a sheep could pull a face? So here I am,
Father of Man, and dignified by years,
a tale in my possession no one else
could match but she, who is herself the tale,
and all I have to tell are anecdotes.
What stays when the emotion drains away
is this moment and that, the lamb, a bath,
Abel's first laugh, when he saw his first chicken.
I lived here once. I know
which streets went where. I ran
where this lane starts to go
to the left, where it began
to carry another name.
So I am not impressed
by maps. It's not the same,
your sketch. I think you messed
up my reality.
Where's Archer? Appleton?
The dogleg at du Pres?
I know now what you've done,
you've gone to see what's there.
You stood on my home ground
as is. That wasn't fair;
taking a look around
alters the memory.
It warps the past. It preys
on what we say we see,
It relocates what stays
to houses, then to maps,
till we avert our eyes,
as though all routes collapse
below misfigured skies.
To you a letter. How about q,
Always followed by u, as I
Follow the mark for hay and Hensa?
Too oblique, I know. I know it
Follows, not p to o, but where
We all align, in tidied rows,
Where there are diphthongs we can share,
On monuments a line or less.
O, I say, O. But no one gapes.
They keep, instead, their final shapes.
12 lines. Or several hundred more.
And never again what came before.
Around the corner, where I cannot see,
I see you waiting, haute couture in verse,
Lines I cannot remember on your face,
Deep, but not embellished, and a bright
Hyperbole of allusion in your eyes.
Around the corner. Where I cannot see.
