Jon Anderson just asked if I were
going to read from my collected poems and my corrected prose,
and that's what I'm going to be doing.
Water woman.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
I'm going to read two poems from a recent manuscript.
The first one is called The Bridge of Sighs.
Believe me when I tell you, I have
tried to understand pleasure, the beginning of pleasure.
How I watched my mother that morning
lounging in the red plush chair in the gray submerging
shadows of the parlor as she talked on the phone.
How I stared with each of my five years
at the tender curve of her ankle as
it moved down the high instep of her dry, clean, pale and
perfect foot and over the toes underneath to the arch.
Oh, it just leapt.
More delicate than the arches of the bridges of Venice
built by those gentlemen, the Doges.
Paved by the feet of centuries of lovers
and saved from destruction by the American soldiers
on a similar morning as I watched my mother's foot tense
and relax.
And when she smiled down her long body at me,
and stroked my hair, and offered me
the smooth beauty of her foot, and asked me,
yes, to rub it just a little.
She said right into the phone to whomever, ah.
The ah of the beginning of pleasure,
that demand even as it gives itself up,
that leaves you always ready to begin, always
on the lip of things.
Like a young woman standing by the bridge of sighs,
waving goodbye to the soldiers of the losing side,
waving hello to the soldiers of the winning side.