Jim
When Jim plays the clarinet, his torso lengthens,
his fingers sure on the tone holes,
on the keys. His lips warm on the reed,
he sways in a dance like the dance
I once saw on an Attic amphora,
the son of Aphrodite watering his
mother’s garden, water pouring from the jar
like the chaconne pouring from the clarinet’s bell—
but why the Ancients? Isn’t it enough, Jim’s
rough thatch of hair, small bare boy’s foot
beating out the rhythm on the cold floor,
Jim out of breath at the finish?
~
After Our Elopement
The statue mossy with verdigris,
icy wind off the Charles
buffeting the frill of my hat,
the tight buds of magnolias
on Marlborough Street
with their unborn blossoms.
I remember shivering, drawing in,
the slippery chill
of the lining of my pink suit,
our nervous laughter,
your warm hand
and the fine black hair
on the back of your wrist.
But what had I done to my
precious lonely life? Fear
altered the space
in my chest, intimation
of love’s cross that would become
too heavy to lift.
~
Mary
You could not save your son
on earth.
I won’t ask you to save mine
for life eternal.
Instead, pray for me
to give up
scrubbing things
spotless. Given
your house in Nazareth,
the dry season,
scorched fields,
sirocco wind—
heavy, sandy, hot—
scorpions, the smell
of goats, I hope you
gave the black-burned pot
just a lick and a promise,
opened your mouth
with a melon-eating
grin and bit deep.
Housekeeper of light cleaning,
you let your lullaby trail off.
When your son slept,
you left him.
When it rained at last,
O your gesture that lifted
the reborn pitcher from the basin.
~
Assisted Living
I like having a young man in the house.
I hear the shower run and stop.
Through my half-open bedroom door
I see the side of him, shoulder, ear,
Ray’s hyacinthine hair, wet rivulets.
There’s the fit back of him, towel clinging at the crease of his knees,
hollows deep enough for shadows on each side of Achilles tendon,
heels clean as the dome of new bread.
I hear the clink of a spoon,
the creaking complaint from the door under the sink,
Ray’s rush of so-longs: “bye now, ta ta, dopo, hasta,”
the rasp and shush of his pick-up on gravel, diminishing.
(Ray’s over his ex. “Chrystal meth. She had to get high.”)
The odor of coffee lingers—sweet-bitter, oily, dark.
The kitchen swept. All things returned,
Ray’s cat Scarlet flat out by his door,
broom in the clamp, dust pan on the hook.
Cup, spoon, plate, each returned to its destined place.
Unmoving saguaros in the silver blue distance he crosses,
coming back from his job in town;
before I can ask how it went, he laughs,
“Nada mal. I didn’t get all haired up,”
and pours “ordinary champagne.”
I take one glass; he, two.
And drops the long-handled spoon into the bottle’s mouth.
The tip hits liquid.
To keep wine
evanescent.
With the side of his hand, thumb taut, he brushes crumbs into his palm.
I tell him I had less pain. I tell him I put the word flank in a poem.
~
One Day
So many hours of sunlight, sky flooded with pink, black flashes
of swallows, white-out storm of blossom—back and forth on Main
all day a man holding two bags by the necks like long-necked geese;
placing them down, precisely, rocking, starting again. Northward
six steeples of empty locked churches; on the face
of Rattlesnake Hill, the scar from the shut-down quarry;
flags streaming southward, evidence the wind’s from the north,
invisible wind, time to write to a friend I miss terribly—video
on my screen: six ICE agents we pay for; one nameless young
woman; they crowd her; she screams, What is this? One tells
her, traps her hands. Her voice is soft now.
~
Miriam Levine is the author of Forget about Sleep, her sixth poetry collection, winner of the 2023 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Another collection, The Dark Opens, won the Autumn House Poetry Prize. Other books include Devotion, a memoir; In Paterson, a novel. Levine lives in Florida and New Hampshire. For more information, please go to miriamlevine.com.