I
look out the window in upstate New York, see
the Mediterranean stretching out below me
down the rocky hillside at Faro, three
years, two months, fourteen days earlier.
8:25 A. M.
Rosemary gone back to sleep, pink & white. I
stand at the livingroom window drinking coffee, open
the doors to the balcony. Warmth beginning, tho
I wrap my hands around the cup, count
fishing boats in the sunglare, moving shoreward now
slowly, or
sitting there motionless on the flat sea.
a fat blue arm stretches out from the coast, ripples
where wind and currents show
muscle below the blue skin of sea
stretched out below me.
The coffee’s
cold toward the end of the cup. I go
back to the kitchen for more hot. put
orange in bathrobe pocket, reach for knife, return
to the balcony with the fresh cup where the flat blue sea
fills my eye in the sunglare. stretches out below me.
The Southern Tier: the maple outside the window
warms in the early sun. red buds at the ends of branches
commence their slow bursting . Green soon
Joan moves
her legs against mine in the hall, goes down to
start my egg . Carlos thumps the lower stairs . We move.
All our farewells al-
ready prepared inside us. aaaall our
deaths we carry inside us, double-yolked, the
fragile toughness of the shell. it makes
sustenance possible, makes love possible
as the red buds break against the sunglight
possible green, as legs move against legs
possible softnesses. The soft-boiled
egg is ready now.
Now we eat.
19 . IV . 71
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