Lull

 

corner window pocket of air
at the Olsen House
Cushing, Maine

Lull

 

I am writing you from inside a body

that used to be yours.  Which is to say,

I am writing as a son.

                                    Ocean Vuong

                        On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous

 

 

Some of the snow is receding.  T-

shirt receding.  I mean: it’s February

 

and yesterday it was 57.  I see

last year’s green in patches.

 

I see snowmelt in the birdbath.

The rim is slick with it to the brim.

 

I see the thin tango of a twine of morning

glory vines in the surface of that

 

water: still, then ripple when

the log trucks drive by on highway

 

202.  They are on their way to

paper.  Spruce or larch or pine.

 

Something comes of this calm

after heavy the drive by, the still

 

of the now unrippled water.  I say

I can’t fathom what it is and soon

 

stop even trying.  It’s well beyond

my reach I think.  And yet, didn’t we

 

know, planting annuals, that they’d die

on the trellis and leave

 

behind their wizened vines?  Didn’t

we look into the bell of their morning

 

cheeks and throats and drink

in their briefness like bees,

 

didn’t we hum off

full of it and somewhat drunk

 

from it?  Isn’t it enough

to remember this alone

 

in early February, still months

from spring, and where

 

the weatherman says in two days

time a storm will come. 

 

In two days time we’ll be outside

breaking through two feet

 

of snow, the night having

had her way with us

 

while we slept, falling

to the ground as a white

 

witch and then in rising

left the all of herself

 

behind, or at least her heavy

self, and the rest rising

 

weightless as she climbs—