Evening alone

             

It was a third floor apartment

with patio doors off the living room

to a porch looking out onto a 4-lane,

busy with traffic, Moravia Road.

Evening’s gray was giving an edge

to the exiting orange-glow of the day

that was leaving through those doors

at about the same pace the Sunshine Acid

I’d put on my tongue a half hour ago

was coming-on.

In harmony with this transition

I left the lights off, a bit anxious,

synapses popping behind wet eyes, 

that when the total dark of night

controlled the room I would be

peaking in its grasp.

This tic was replaced by

a dawning sense of warm euphoria

as the room settled into a soft humid glow

and Eleanor Rigby’s scraping bows of violins

were totally liquid within me.

I was as alone with its pulsing

as Father Mckenzie and the other lonely people.

The darkness, now part of my psyche,

gave a nocturnal life to the walls

blooming with energy,

textured like fog -

even the nap of my flannel pants

was quivering with a warmth

and life of its own.

I opened the curtains

as the beige street globes came on

adding color and definition

to the traffic that flowed

down roads connecting

the parking lot below to the planet -

trailers of headlights branching out

in all directions to everything.

Turning back to the sofa

I felt a squash under foot

as the large-leafed fern

let out a faint scream of psychedelic mishap,

bleeding green ooze under my now heavy,

traumatized Cole-Hahn suedes.

Library before dawn

  

It is still, all asleep,

Cabernet relaxes against the glass.

The books facing me

remind me of the girls,

dresses all different colors,

lined up across the hall at

CYO dances, facing the boys,

standing straight, short and tall,

giving a certain flavor

and aroma to the room,

while waiting to be chosen.

Full of words, but too shy

to speak aggressively -

always the whispering though

as now the shelves

begin to faintly vibrate.

Dorothy Parker quietly denigrating

Pound about his politics,

Pastan to Dickinson about the

economy of her pain and

Plath very low to Sexton

on the craft of death.

I vaguely make out Eliot

criticizing my choice of wine

when Whitman hushes them all

and wants to get back to the

slow-dancing of teenage boys,

first gropes to ‘Wonderland by Night’ -

comparing it to my handling

of their volumes and my occasionally

taking them individually to the car

apparently for closer inspection.

Walgreens

           

Joan asked if she could

help me –        

a friendly enough clerk

at Walgreen’s,

with a ‘ JOAN ’ name tag -

and I’m trying on sunglasses.

Try these with the pink lenses,

she hands me a pair

I would not have chosen

and as I lift them to my nose

to model them in the mirror

she explains that,

You’ll be able to see God

and the pink glow will warm

your understanding.

Morning epiphany.

The afternoon spent

in a pink haze of holiness,

contemplating all those stories

of Zen masters and their

eccentric methods,

time journeys by association,

scribbling poems about everything,

formulating new life priorities,

and wondering about a shrine

and candles for St. Joan.

After Dinner

            

It’s tight at our table,

unknown parts of the same group,

face to face and she wants

to teach me to drink Cognac.

The waiter brings snifters and a bottle,

she mulls it over hot tea –

sets the pear-shaped bottom on its side

pours like ‘time has stopped’ slowly

the amber liquid into the heated glass.

Small deft hands stroke the aged decanter

as warm zephyrs intoxicate

the narrowing space between us.

“Sip and swirl, don’t swallow,

let it slide down your tongue,

ease into your throat.

You have to get past the alcohol

and taste the fruit.

Great tasters can tell the grape,

the region, the exact plot of ground.”

My ground is sinking around me,

my face and limbs like embers

as the slick silk glides

as she has instructed,

…. and then she does hers….

the French would be proud.

She circles the rim of the glass,

discovers a drop of the nectar,

with the slightest of smiles

and mink eyes stuck to mine,

puts her finger to my lips

and asks me again to taste the fruit.