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She washes dishes by hand now
so she can stand
in the light at half-dark
and look out on the yard. Her hands
go down into the water,
float like pale flounder
in the murk. She brings up
a plate, washes round the rim as
a crow wings down
from its circuit, nightly habit
of checking in. Its eyes are black
points, bereft of emotion, a pointillist's
suggestion of sight. What is left
now but the exercise
of the common, motions known
by rote, the familiar
claim on life. There beside
the cutting board is the knife.
Every day she tells herself
that one more day is enough. |
There is a small house behind my left
eye.
The man who lives there enjoys keeping bees.
He and his wolfhound sometimes stand on the bluff
overlooking the sea. The sea sounds very far away.
His name is Michael or Matthew—
something that starts with "M" anyway.
He likes to look at the clouds far off over the water.
Then he puts on his keeper's mask and walks among
the bees, humming. He likes that his humming
is drowned by the bees droning. The buzzing
is reassuring. He walks slowly among them,
as though in an oven, a shining man.
The dog does not go with him when he walks
in the cloud of bees. The cloud of bees
is a place he must go alone. When he returns
there is something like quiet between them.
In the evenings he returns to the bluff
with his dog. He thinks about an identical man
in an identical house on the other side of the sea.
If there is a pinprick of light far out over the water,
as there sometimes is, he believes the other man
is performing miracles. He wonders what there is
to see out there, with nothing but water and sky.
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