Number 40

The Pigeon at my Feet


there is a pigeon
at my feet

both of us moving
towards the street

the pigeon is round
but has no head

I am no body
a shadow instead

maybe we can coalesce
becoming
one solid birdman more
and one pebbled shadow less

Number 39

Foodscape

two fried eggs
that serve
as small suns
satellite peas
bobbing like buoys
on choppy seas

a celery tree
on the beach
several caves of yam
with a jar
of strawberry jam
in each

stretches of fish
laid on a porcelain dish
seaweed dill
spread on the windowsill

Number 38

Gold

don't sit on anyone's lap*
unless it's a horse's lap
all done up snappy and tight

you are as heavy as gold
but the horse is pleased as punch
to shoulder your shine


*Jean Arp, “I Am a Horse” in Marcel Jean ed., Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p.75

Number 37

Hard to Grasp


the days
are gelatinous

too slippery
to knot together

there's no purchase
in my pull

I'll he here
tugging

until the geese
fly over

Number 36

An Orchid in the Mirror


The doubling of the orchid
is a calamitous irony.
"Damned by the mirror that reflects you"
wrote Ronsard,
watering the eye rather than the image,
turning its back on the other
with its back turned to it.

Take the mirror in your arms
like a woman, like squinting envy,
with the orchid like a decoy
over the abyss
of your multiplied life.

The orchid can irritate you
back home again
where this equals something else
and not that

May 26, 2004.

This poem is one of the fifty making up The Orchid Book, a small handmade volume of my orchid poems with drawings and water colours by my soon-to-be wife, Malgorzata.  It was made the year after we met--in 2004.