Topoi

1 . MORNING The year and its as like as eggs, the days in their crates of season we break open and the yolk of fresh sun we scramble the runny light into a firm break of the night's winter helping of the fast. * Yellow dishes— forsythia set out for the early meal of season— sit the house    yards the town parks    down together to this spring as to a table all set in order    just So good to see you and your way found back.                      * The arriving coats of smell are hung in the air, butt-smacked and oiled babies of moment; and years of taste as touch hug    the senses to the living; sweet sour bitter salty some never experienced again, the gloved fingers of bananas    so briefly kissed with ripeness; fruit, grip-shaped thought brought to the tongue, the finished taste of words,    an aftertaste of silence,    the morning glories we haven't tasted yet                      * life, as lasting as any one sense, a taste a sight, an orange mix of kiss with sweetness for the moment it exists, finishes and is swallowed, is also those who finish hungry or starve to death    which swallows; the final stage of rattlesnake bite is yellow vision, light,    then you both go out. Fear, to the tongue, is metallic: I tasted a copper penny    it could have been a one-time and final, incomparable —How does life taste to one condemned in that cup    this morning?—