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Yellow From a Distance
We have almost reached the pond;
You have left your glasses at home on the table
And squint across the field
To the unfolding skunk cabbage.
Farsighted or near, I can't remember which
But you say it is only yellow you see,
Which from a distance could be daffodils.
But they are different shapes, the bell and the candle,
And I describe to you how they float
On the marsh, like a harbor of lanterns,
Because I want you to see them as I do,
A thousand tiny sails, each distinct,
Each one among the others, each drifting.
To you, the world's a blur, and I recall another walk
When the cherry trees had lifted their pink awnings
And you couldn't see the trees themselves,
Only the row of cloudy blossoms passing overhead -
Happy for that much. I think sometimes
You leave them off,
Not because you love my voice
As we pass each yard with its scrubby patch of flowers,
Or how I tell the shades of blue,
But because the earth is beautiful,
And beauty is a form of suffering.
French Rose
It is the day after Thanksgiving,
The year terrorists
Toppled two buildings in the name of religion
And gave Americans the gift
Of humility and took from them a certain innocence.
It is the year
In which I fell out of love -
Or he fell out of love with me,
Which is really the long angel's fall
From grace, from the heaven
A good feeling makes between two people,
And I learned redemption
Is passing up the opportunity
To stay in pain.
I am watching the apple tree
Drop precisely one apple per day,
As if it has mastered the beautiful art
Of giving up, and in that nudity
It is free of red ornaments,
Like the vulnerable face
Of a woman without lipstick
Who has made her peace
With the pretenses of the world.
I am poor and single.
I am poor and married
To the idea of happiness, the same way sky
Is the only word for blue.
Because it's my birthday,
I bathed this morning
In the French rose soap
My sister bought for me
At a ritzy store in an upscale mall,
Proving there is a world
Where people care about the way things smell
And the delicate carved M
In the top of the bar
Like a secret initial to some exclusive club
So that a woman like myself
Might rise one morning
From the sweet and steamy bath
Into cold November air,
Slick and pink from the hot water
Ready to begin again with a faith
Odd as a terrorist’s, thinking,
This is how you live, this
Is what you do.
Karen Whalley
("The rented violin")
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