the water sounds so close it is painful.
The canoe on it slices through wet weeds,
though the voices of its couple can barely be heard.
So the mild jungle that came to surround us
on the shore was a green lens that blurs–
sharpens, then blurs noises. Of all that I said
you heard maybe two words:
cruelly,
say,
and
waste
-
before a desirable silence
made it just as you'd said. Trees. Trees absorbing
our voices, though they had no use for them.
Katy Aisenberg
SOMETHING BORROWED
Having neither seen nor heard from you
In
thirty days my friend, I met you in a dream
And you were with child.
We tried to speak many times:
I will
Stop fighting imaginary battles.
I will work like hell.
I will dream longer dreams at night.
You had a child and I
Had two hundred white doves in my home.
My house is filled with these riches,
With the forked tracks of rugged pink feet,
for
T
C.
d. 10/84
With pecking in warm burrows. The moan and coo.
I can hardly hear myself think
When they settle on my chest and shoulders
So I wake in an extravagance of white.
But my hand is uncertain, wanders
As though each thin blue line were a vein
Traced across this neutral body and taking me
With my forgetful, saleable health toward you,
The array of your blood.
