48 Morning poems

Unreal precision of the houses at first light

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?—

As I drove into town the driver in front of me runs a stop sign. A pedestrian pulls down his cap. A man comes out of his house to sweep the steps. Ordinariness bright as raspberries. I turn on the radio. Somebody tells me the day is sunny and warm. A woman laughs and my daughter steps out of the radio. Grief spreads in my throat like strep. I had forgotten, I was happy, I maybe was humming "You Are My Lucky Star," a song I may have invented. Sometimes a red geranium, a dog, a stone will carry me away. But not for long. Some memory or another of her catches up with me and stands like an old nun behind a desk, ruler in hand.

I could fix the leaky pipe Under the sink, or wander over And bother Jerry who’s lost

to beat the froggiest of morning voices, my son gets out of bed and takes a lumpish song along—a little lyric learned in kindergarten, something about a boat. He’s found it in the bog of his throat before his feet have hit the ground, follows its wonky melody down the hall and into the loo as if it were the most natural thing for a little boy to do, and lets it loose awhile in there to a tinkling sound while I lie still in bed, alive like I’ve never been, in love again with life, afraid they’ll find me drowned here, drowned in more than my fair share of joy.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace. Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendour on my brow; But out, alack! he was but one hour mine; The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

I can hear her through the thin wall, singing, up before the sun: two notes, a kind of hushed half-breathing, each time the baby makes that little moan— can hear her trying not to sing, then singing anyway, a thing so old it might as well be Hittite or Minoan, and so soft no one would ever guess that I myself once sang that very song: back when my son and then his brother used to cry all night or half the morning, though nothing in all the world was wrong. And now how strange: to be the man from next door, listening, as the baby cries then quiets, cries and quiets each time she sings their secret song, that would sound the same ten thousand years ago, and has no meaning but to calm.

I wake in the morning early And always, the very first thing, I poke out my head and I sit up in bed And I sing and I sing and I sing.

I walk into the bakery next door To my apartment. They are about To pull some sort of toast with cheese From the oven.   When I ask: What’s that smell? I am being A poet, I am asking What everyone else in the shop Wanted to ask, but somehow couldn’t; I am speaking on behalf of two other Customers who wanted to buy the Name of it.   I ask the woman Behind the counter for a percentage Of her sale. Am I flirting? Am I happy because the days Are longer?   Here’s what She does: She takes her time Choosing the slices.   “I am picking Out the good ones,” she tells me.   It’s April 14th. Spring, with five to ten Degrees to go.   Some days, I feel my duty; Some days, I love my work.

The day gets slowly started. A rap at the bedroom door, bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice the color of sun which isn’t out this morning. A cool shower, a shave, soothing Noxzema for razor burn. A bed is made. The paper doesn’t come until twelve or one. A gray shine out the windows. “No one leaves the building until those scissors are returned.” It’s that kind of a place. Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse. The worried gray is melting into sunlight. I wish I’d brought my book of enlightening literary essays. I wish it were lunch time. I wish I had an appetite. The day agrees with me better than it did, or, better, I agree with it. I’ll slide down a sunslip yet, this crass September morning.