The Waker's Corridor: Poems

White Coves

White Coves 23 neW York neW York A runnel forks at a patch of wild lilies. As day drains the monochrome. Shade from the mountains. It is just me. And him for the day. A creek below that we can only hear. A film goes up against the sky. My son climbs on the roof. Why all the dust, son? So I can be your eyes. So green even in the fall, everything abend. What can you see up there? I see you in the moss. I see a bobtail rushing uphill. And the stone? No stone from here. The leaves block it. Come down now, you might slip. I will never slip. I will never slip. I think he is dancing to it. I am not worried. The runnel forks at a patch of wild lilies. The distance is a dance. Soon the brown leaves will hold their edges in its water. Soon we will all move. Downhill, downstate, together. One girl carries a housecat in her basket. One keeps stopping to tie your shoes. One keeps her skirt from dragging the earth along with her. Come down. I’m not going anywhere. 24 WhiTe coves Still embrace your beautiful land, and still of your daughters, O Father, Of your islands, the flowering, not one has been taken. I. There is, beneath, a promise of renewal. The workers’ pavement poured on outgrowths: squares, Once raised or pushed askew by roots and cracked By constant pressure, restlessness, by night Were harmonized. First, Twelfth was closed. They cast The worklights high above the Tudor houses. The mixers cycled in their noise through The quiet hours, while residents would sleep With their ears covered. First, a rising smoke, Pale white, passed by the windows. Cutting through The old cement took time. But quickly they Discarded every vestige, shard by shard: The blots of cast off chewing gum that stuck And turned to tar. The unintentional Designs embedded in the tin and glass (One piece beneath a corbeil might have been The flat, diluted outline of a bowl With arching flowers). The initials drawn With sticks by two young sisters when The old cement took forever to dry. All these were hauled off to the harbor dump. And in their place a scent of chloride washed The air. The spreader boxes kept each square Minutely even, white, in perfect mean. 25 For many nights the lights would move from street To street. And morning, in its uniform Brightness, unveiled the clean geometry. And as this order crept along the ground Restlessly, we waited far away. 26 II. It is a slow spring. The sashes open. He ties them down with linen, then takes a few moments to engage his mistress. Should she be drinking from a pickle jar? Or piercing olives with his daughters’ earrings? No matter. It’s Sunday. The martinis are dry. Finally quiet, except the gifted child at the house next door, playing a sonata. “What will you give me now?” He watches Her fingers mimic the notes on one of the girls’ bedposts. Her face is lightly powdered. Her robe is opened down the middle. “You are a bore.” Out in the country, the girls are a sum of miles, decorative rows of windmills. Dormant. They ossify in his mind. Which is which? Today, the woman here, her flesh never stops feeling unfamiliar. “What are their names, again?” Sometimes it’s as if they’ve grown invisible. As if, like clouds, the day passes through their willow skin. No matter. He pictures them in white blouses, boarding the ferry, dockworkers making overtures, so many things that can happen outside this house, this street, this block, this separation of the rocks and sea growing like a wave farewell. Somewhere will take them. No matter. He is a bore. A flood. The barrel of a gun 27 points somewhere off the coast, waiting to fire in celebration. A thousand times the embers we turn over to the sea. 28 III. Lydia The only one taken. Atlantic or straits. Tantalum mines. Her sleeve dipped from mud to rock. She swept leftovers off a bone bridge: salt cod, flour, paper sown over the brined. Bluefish scattered over bitumen. His ivory shoulder. Obstructed waves lapped on clay (or...