POETRY JANUARY 30, 2013
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The one book where we never lose our place
spreads its covers to a gooseflesh Braille.
We are bookmarks slipped into each other.
In that book, we read each night of a couple
who go without touching for hours on end;
then, the dishes put away, the toddler
powered down and set to charge for tomorrow,
they thumb a lock and make a greenhouse
where once there was a master bedroom.
Orchids push open the drawers. Honeybees
bother the reading lamp.
The carpet threads itself with grass
twitching higher in a sunset-sunrise time-lapse
as the house regresses to a forest,
the plumbing to brooks, the chandeliers to stars
and “mommy” and “daddy” to the first lovers ever
under a glazed glass dome the size of the sky,
no duty save sensation,
the scar from her Caesarian
his Tropic of Capricorn. At last the throbbing
vines that roped them flush to the bed
slink back into the box spring.
The greenhouse shatters into mist
to reveal a plaster ceiling. They pull apart,
fall open like the covers of a book,
their years together pressed, preserved,
petals they can place on their tongues.
4 comments
What a lovely poem updating the song of Paolo and Francesca. The opening is enchanting: "The one book where we never lose our place spreads its covers to a gooseflesh Braille." and so are the concluding lines: "The greenhouse shatters into mist to reveal a plaster ceiling. They pull apart, fall open like the covers of a book, their years together pressed, preserved, petals they can place on their tongues." But I love the metaphors you use which capture the dreaminess of Romance and our sex lives. I hope Francesca and Paolo will get chance to read your poem.
- arnon1
January 30, 2013 at 10:08pm
I wish the tone deaf digital stuff will fix their forced enjambment of paragraphs. What a shame: publish a delicate poem and the force up the reader the dreary forced marches of a single prose paragraph. Shame on you.
- arnon1
January 30, 2013 at 10:10pm
Excellent imagery; very effective. I enjoyed this.
- nindustrial
January 31, 2013 at 3:50pm
This poem makes me think of the love poetry of John Donne in extended, witty conceit, and in the celebration of the bedroom as a center of the universe. As Arnon says, a wonderful poem.
- basman
February 1, 2013 at 5:21pm