Journal: April 19 : The Southern Tier
I
look out the window in upstate New York, see
the Mediterranean stretching out below me
down the rocky hillside at Faro, three
years, two months, fourteen days earlier .
8:25 A. M.
Rosemary gone back to sleep, pink & white . I
stand at the livingroom window drinking coffee, open
the doors to the balcony . Warmth beginning, tho
I wrap my hands around the cup, count
fishing boats in the sunglare, moving shoreward now
slowly, or
sitting there motionless on the flat sea .
a fat blue arm stretches out from the coast, ripples
where wind and currents show
muscle below the blue skin of sea
stretched out below me .
The coffee’s
cold toward the end of the cup . I go
back to the kitchen for more hot . put
orange in bathrobe pocket, reach for knife, return
to the balcony with the fresh cup where the flat blue sea
fills my eye in the sunglare . stretches out below me.
The Southern Tier: the maple outside the window
warms in the early sun . red buds at the ends of branches
commence their slow bursting . Green soon
Joan moves
her legs against mine in the hall, goes down to
start my egg . Carlos thumps the lower stairs . We move.
All our farewells al-
ready prepared inside us . aaaall our
deaths we carry inside us, double-yolked, the
fragile toughness of the shell . it makes
sustenance possible, makes love possible
as the red buds break against the sunglight
possible green, as legs move against legs
possible softnesses . The soft-boiled
egg is ready now .
Now we eat.
19 . IV . 71
Copyright Credit: Paul Blackburn, “Journal: April 19 : The Southern Tier” from The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn. Copyright © 1989 by Paul Blackburn. Reprinted by permission of Joan Blackburn.
Source: The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (Persea Books, 1989)