Monday, May 2, 2016

Peggy Day at 95

No, no, don’t tell me the secret
of your alchemy, how every morning,
in your elongated moment, you conjure   
another jar on a hill in Tennessee
with the arrangement of bagel and bowl
in the still life of our breakfast table
or hear in a riff of Ella singing Gershwin,
a phrase the shape of things to come
on your smoky white page
where a dog-walker becomes Max Planck
and Bogey in his mole-hill of beans
is suddenly a sherpa tribesman in his climb
of mountains doubtful as white elephants
or an emperor stripped of shmatta
scoops stanzas of ice cream. Like Stevens
you take a two mile walker-walk
from room to room, light bulbs overhead.
Still in your peignoir prime, ever nubile
in your unstoppable streetcar named Desire,
you are altogether you
there in your sunny chair,
with late frothy cappuccino,
peeling the cara cara orange
from its old chaos to autumn auroras.
You have not yet learned how
to act your age, not yet
in the mind of winter.
You are my runcible spoon,
between mince and quince, half here,
half fiddling on your un-wed, sliver
of a lunatic moon with cows jumping.
What say you, Camus, is there no point
even with a sharpened number two pencil
that can travel 35 miles in absurd scribble?
Preferably Not said scrivener Bartleby
but Yes, Barnacle said, Yes,
on the last page after the final No,
Yes and one more Oh!


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