Rose-Scented Lotion
The level of rose-scented lotion daily
lower in its bottle. And because
we are not attempting to fill it,
time slows to a standstill.
The room brims with silence.
Afternoon nap? Not yet afternoon.
Sun neither out nor in.
March takes a breath.
No chasing now, no fleeing.
What were we after? I
forget and then remember.
Remember and forget
what was after us.
However still you stand, it blunders past
Only for so long before it finds you.
However fast you run,
you can outrun it only for so long.
This afternoon (now truly afternoon)
it too has paused for breath.
No mad pursuit, no struggle to escape.
The bottle of rose-scented lotion
is neither full nor empty.
Blue
When my son was two,
taken to the country the first time
and held up to admire the rural view,
what did he see? He told us:
too much blue.
“I don’t like those blue mountains,” he said.
Looking at the powder-corpsy blue
walls of my Athenian apartment,
“Blue is a thirsty color,” the poet decreed.
He and the two year-old would have agreed.
That toddler now is thirty-one. And I
lived in Athens forty years ago.
Twenty years ago the poet died.
In life he gave the child a big blue bead,
cloudy beach glass. Though that bead got lost,
as keepsakes do,
our three minds met and still can meet
in blue.
