Poem of the Week | June 24, 2008

      For J.P.

Around the time the living room
became unbearable to look at
I took in two cats, a gray and a gray.
It was after the dog died and
the house was getting smaller.
It was after I rowed the small boat
into the seascape on the wall;
after I invented the small boat.
The cats ended all of that, for a while.
I was happy to watch them,
their speed and lassitude,
how when they were asleep
I could touch them awake.

But I began to hear the ho-hum
in each purr.  I was witness
to the energy that misplaces itself
until it’s gone.  Mine, not theirs.
My dream: lying back
with a superficial would, every hour
a nurse’s breast glancing my arm.
Such nice passivity that finally isn’t
a life.  Circles everywhere
looked like zeroes to me.

I write this for you
who is surrounded by it now, the stasis
that won’t end, these afternoons when
there’s nothing to say
and you say it
in order to survive.
I want to tell you its ends,
it just goes away.
I remember a twitch in a vein-
as if something lost were tapping on a wall-
no, it wasn’t that mystical.
I remember something like joy
coming with a fat pillow of its own…
no; it ends, it just goes away.