I keep an ottoman in my heart
exclusively for you.
You come so seldom.
Your aroma
stays long after.
How
exact
absence is.
Breathe
in it
the yes that gives way.
Circles fleck the lake
as lavender, eggshell blue,
a just visible scarlet fade from the sky—
a
breeze
wrinkles the water—
a
whistle,
a bell—
ovals of feeding—
waves
like mice scrabble, rest—
lamplight
there
and there.
____
This is one of a suite of poems written
under the spell of Emily Dickinson's late, inexhaustible, utterly hermetic
letters. The title is a sentence from one of them. |