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  • Aubade:The Nest
  • Rachel Hadas (bio)

For Michael Snediker

       You left the dreamwarm for me, milk on its unwiped lips.Our swaying nest, precariously high—       rock-a-bye—       was perched betweensinuous branches; we could not be seen       but had a viewdown to the bustling streets of Katmandu.       And in the nest a bed:       rumpled sheets still warm       stained pink and gold with dawn.Love, yes, but love anterior to desire,love before desire was invented.One ventured out into the world below,       taking care to leavethe other one at home to guard the nest       and work or rest.Home, he mocked gently. Yes, what else but home?In the remote era when I was a wife and mother,was that not what I'd called it? Wasn't thiscoming and going, toing and froing, taking turnswhat parents do? What he and I had done?Home was the word we used to use back then,whose flavor lingers strangely on the tongue.Home: a nest in which to hatch the dream       and one by oneanatomize each visitation       of faces, voices, stories       from the world below,the waking world threading its hours throughthe labyrinthine alleyways of Katmandu,teeming markets, and, beyond, the skylineringed by tall peaks shining with early snow.       Nest; bed; magnet; mirror.Bilateral symmetry. Whose arms were these?       Milk on the lips: I left       the dream still warm for you. [End Page 111]

Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University, where she has taught for many years. Her new book of poems is The Golden Road (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books, 2012). A memoir, Strange Relation: A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry, was published in 2011.

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