Four Spoons (a revisiting)
1.
I drink a Manhattan,
eat a plate of nachos,
smoke a cigarette.
2.
Everything I say
I say for real this time,
my second, my endless chance,
and with gusto.
3.
already I am an old woman,
fingers furled, milky eyes,
wandering around this fine home,
collecting spoons (you know those collections?)
asleep with a book by
4.
cold in the month of June
all around you radiance grows,
the sky bottoms out in your eyes.
you will not answer your phone,
you will not answer me this.
but I never called.
I will be what I am
and you will in your time
be what you are.
Even still,
you will want to please me,
you will want to ease me,
you will learn to pray.
5.
My mother was a pirate
my father, a spade,
the night I came to be.
6.
Heat on the lungs
means grief.
I watch him die
his body turn inward,
and the heat go out of him.
And at the funeral a woman says,
my you have the nicest hair.
Don’t I know?
7.
I get on my knees,
the floor is wood, rough
wood, we pulled up the
linoleum to get to it.
I get on my knees
this morning.
8.
Where I’m from
the men get shaved clean and slick their hair.
The women drink cans of beer
and watch the men grow prettier by the year.
And there’s many a woman in these parts,
homesteading it alone,
smart as whips, lickity split, chop a cord of wood.
9.
The sparrow of your willingness
an unfed greed
called the grace from me.
From you I took four spoons,
a garlic masher, a pot for boiling.
I saw you whispering
near the creek and went closer
to hear you say:
I will be humble,
I will be humble,
and learn to grieve
what’s not forgiven.
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