Bath at 2:30
cymbalcrash caress
my shoulders, heavy with
the weight of alarms
that go off at four-thirty ay em
I slip down until my mouth is
covered by bubbles.
The trumpet blows, by some
subtle wind, from
nineteen fifty-nine until it
is calling to me out
of the speaker on the marble counter
across the room,
clear of the hot bath water.
If there were once words
spun along with the piano,
the cymbal, the trumpet,
they were too heavy to
lift on a zephyr,
so all I get is clear,
oscillating praise--
the kind I always feel I deserve
after standing on
my feet for eight hours.
***
They Never Look Up
When you are walking down the hill at the
north end of campus—slowly, of course,
it must be at least a fifty degree angle—
if you should look up and catch a glimpse
of that God-graced blue, pause for a moment;
it won't take long for the autumn wind to
pick the prime yellow leaves from the top
branches of the heaven-grazing trees and
twist them down to you, fluttering, like
marmalade butterflies. Then you may turn
your head back to the ground—sandlicking,
grasseating, dirteye creature that you are—
and continue to your car in the far parking lot.
