One of these maybe from July 18. I lost track for a while. The heat has been enormous here in New England, coupled with humidity that stultifies us all.
Perpetual Adoration
She divides the daylight hours
by six— two for each of us,
and sends the first one off
to pray before the Holy Eucharist
in its gaudy golden locket.
Rosaries, novenas, little litanies of saints,
Pray for us oh Lord—
Votive candles in red cups,
dust motes dancing in the middle distance.
We practice sitting still with no one
but the flat sad eyes of Jesus staring
from His crucifix. At home the hill
of sheets and diapers is transfigured
into swaths of cloth that float on pins.
Stupid with the August heat we
wait our turn to enter the cool dark.
Outside the church whoever’s leaving
is met by summer light as harsh as judgment.
Tick of the mantle clock.
Squeak of the hinge on the cabinet beneath the sink.
At home the day ended, too much left undone;
him reaching; her making silence. To sleep
she kisses her beads,
Oh Lord hear our prayer.
And here's another from the same day.
On Being The Muse
That day I am writing about the look of the olive groves
just before sunrise. In a picture I took from the terrace at Monte Zuzzu
the oldest trees toss their heavy crowns on the light wind,
and all through the groves, kiss-kiss-kiss, olive leaves
play each other. The pale, almost platinum sky is about to assume its rosy veil.
All of it part of the record of my existence.
I am alone on the patio in my white nightgown
staring over the groves at the Adriatic
which the sun has not yet shaped into a cymbal
that will ring with the shrieks of gulls following the freighters—
I only imagine the sound, being so far inland, being so far up the terraces,
being half asleep and in thrall to the olives’ music,
being the only thing awake, a gleam on water,
the note of a song not yet heard.
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