Nice Dark One
Yours is a noble bio, one note
played by an oboe: loon, loan,
loin. Like Christ on the crucifix
in La Sagrada Familia, encircled
by clusters of grapes dangling
from a parasol as if he were
on the parachute ride
at the fair, new moon, you must find
your inner vinter, rent
a rite, a vein: nite nite.
Instead of a stone, roll
the rhododendrons back,
back to Rhodes before the island
arose from the sea because I am practicing
giving up the scarlet Cardinal who sits
each morning on the feeder, cracking
a black oil sunflower seed
with his beak or sometimes swiping
a seed and flying off to place it
in the mouth of his peachy
mate before they both fly off
to the neighbor’s Burning Bush,
where they build their nest
each spring. All morning
he hyperventilates like the
rubber doll I squeezed in
my hand when I was a child, the one born
with a metal navel
in its back, but there is never
enough wind to blow out
the low-lit candles of last year’s
beech leaves still lifted
in the forest. At the close
of the evening service, they always
sang “Just As I Am” and “Let
the Lower Lights Be Burning”—
still, I am practicing
giving up evening, Brunello,
gelato alla nocciola, and finally, as
Zen masters urge, giving up
the i in desire. But what
will paradise be without i, the lost
paradise, the only one, Proust says,
that is true.
