Henri Matisse, “Woman in a Purple Coat”
On wall, photo by Michael Bournas-Ney

Window Shopping

Some pass by windows with a monk’s restraint:

quickly see, just barely see, and do not even dream of

touch. Others prowl there with the famished eye

of the voluptuary. More! Matter without

limit . . . for them, window shopping is

a battle between Want and Have. Station

after station of the stubborn, separating glass.


But not for me. I also pass, and yes, look in,

love to look in . . . bolts of blue silk furled round

unsmelled perfume of the mannequins,

charms of beads, canary-yellow beads

streaming over singing clavicles. I pass,

through noon and afternoon and dusk

and do not tire of this dream-parade, this store

of pictures gathered in the soul’s vitrine,

as I retire into a sated quiet and delight

near-night

on this side of the glass, I put on my new hat,

the image-dripping hat of an imagined spring.

Published in Plume

Fake Lemon Tree on a November Day in a Boat Depot in Chelsea

 

O lemon tree, how you emerge, distinct from everything

around you. I’ve passed you often at the pier, each time

arrested by your solitary presence. A sink, bare table,

and two empty chairs sit quietly behind the glass front

of the office where you’re planted, as if you were

chief officer of some mysterious and

                                                  lonely enterprise.

 

Your leaves, your certain yellow, hold center stage

on this November day with its hours running toward

losses. You’re cheap, a fake, but still – you’re constant.

With you I never have to worry – will too much rain curl

up the edges of your leaves, will you come back after

the unexpected frost? You’re true-blue, or at least

                                         a perpetually plastic-yellow.

 

Your warmer sisters elsewhere, lemon trees in Yuma County

and Tulare, lemoniés in Crete and Poros, limoneros in Valencia

and Oaxaca, trees that glow and ripen, their fruit picked lovingly

and placed on tables – a longer, shorter, and more complicated

tale is what they tell. Celebration of the juice. Tenderness

for what is left behind. A song of what is difficult:

                                                  the fragrant and the bitter rind.

Published in Plume

Ullage

 

Not-milk, not-water and not-wine

but that by which we know these things

ullage: the space in the bottle that’s empty.

 

Basho sang it with his one skylark, free,

winging his way from here to there

with seventeen tiny beats,

and silence all around him.

 

Hakuin bathed in it with his Tea Bowl,

ink on paper on a hanging scroll

a tiny base, half circle, and on top

an oval to catch the invisible brew

Taste the warm tea: “ah”

it’s steeped in emptiness.

 

We know it too

 

(not a mirage;

just travel down the glass

and see ullage

change into presence) :

 

After the parting,

 

 these come into relief:

      the street

                     the bed

           that uninhabited first spring.

Published in Plume Poetry 7, anthology