OK, this is the end.
And for this poem, it would be useful to visualize the garden
flowers hydrangeas, beautiful summer garden flowers,
usually pink or blue, which actually become more lovely
as they fade.
The colors become more mottled and complex as they age.
"Spent."
"Late August morning, I go out to cut spent and faded
hydrangeas, washed greens, russets,
troubled little auras of sky as if these
were the very silks of Versailles modeled by rain
and ruin, then half restored after all this time.
When I come back with my handful,
I realized I've accidentally locked the door
and can't get back into the house.
The dining room window's easiest, crawl through beauty
bush and spiraea, push aside some errant maples,
take down the wood frame screen, hoist myself up,
but how exactly to clamber across the sill
and radiator down to the tile?
I try bending one leg in, but I don't fold readily.
I push myself up so that my waist rests against the sill
and lean forward.
Place my hands on the floor and begin
to slide down into the room, which
makes me think this was what it was like to be born.
Awkward, too big for the passageway.
Negotiate?
Submit?
When I give myself to gravity, there I am inside, no harm.
The dazzling, splotchy flower heads scattered around me
on the floor.
Will leaving the world be the same?
Uncertainty as how to proceed, some discomfort, and suddenly
you're where?
I am so involved with this idea, I forget to unlock the door.
So when I go out to fetch the mail.
I'm locked out again.
Am I at home in this house?
Would I prefer to be out here where I could be almost anyone?
This time it's simpler--
the window frame, the radiator, my descent--
born twice in one day.
In their silver jug, these bruised,
blessed flowers, how hard I had to work
to bring them into this room.
When I say spent, I don't mean they have no further coin.
If there are lives to come, I think
they might be a little easier than this one."
[APPLAUSE]