As children, we peered over black music stands, deep eye flirtations across a roomful of glinting brass. You liked my long brown braids, I liked your Jack Purcell sneakers. You hid poems In my locker. We grew up, went walking, and heat rose in the spaces between us where we never ever touched. And all through college, and even after, once a year there’d still be something. A call. A letter. Then less. Then none. I saw you on television and though you’d lost your hair, your eyes had not hardened. Your serious smile looked the same. Somewhere in me the girl at the counter still wipes things down at the end of the day. She hangs wet dish towels, wraps up the bologna . She’s appeased grumpy customers, listened to their stories, served black coffee & toast, & covered the shift when the manager didn’t show. Somewhere in me the girl still walks home alone before supper. Bone tired but breathing the summer sundown, cut grass, loving the way her Jack Purcells hug her feet, grip the ground. Miles of parquet floors, marble, slate. Those days meant for slow walking & me alone. Cool rooms for looking not touching vanishing point hallways, and every corner turned another masterpiece. Nothing compares to the intake of breath, the goosebumps, the welling tears as you move toward the actual, real, right in front of you swirling Starry Night for the first time, or confront Munch’s Scream, or the dying horse in Guernica, but for me, it’s the small, black and white pen and ink studies, children at play, women at work, the clean outlines of ordinary days sketched through the ages, in moments of random attention, tender observation.
Early Morning Poems 