Study in Yellow

When the dark night of the body gets black enough,

and I have had my fill of magazines, 

catalogs, videos, warmed over Thai food

from styrofoam boxes left on the Sunday Times

to adorn the morning, I step up the street

to Whistler’s garden in the Rue du Bac, 

where I condole with Mrs Rimmington

as she repugns the tourists at Lausanne,

while Mme d'Ombré is about to turn

from the frightful Mr Ince to interject,

at first with one of her sprightly grimaces

inflecting her unspoken note of relief,

how glad she was to come and find me here. 

And so we all are here, happy enough,

or at least content to have come round to this

and find ourselves again just as we were,

though with a little wear along the edges,

to speak if only for myself—or so 

it could have come to me to say, had not her eyes 

darkened in the shade of her yellow hat

sliding across her brow as she glanced to find him 

sparkling among the flames of the ailanthus, 

then turned again and tore my breath away. 

* * *

Carpenter Gothic

The raiment we wear when people come visiting

betrays a fondness for the unpredictable 

others might find alarming.  They sit in the parlor, 

in the intimacy of shadows sparked by dustmotes 

wandering through lilac-scents in ambivalent breezes, 

and watch for our return from the business that called us



shortly after they came, when we scarcely knew

what errand brought them.  In the garage unopened cans of paint

wait like stalwart citizens, gallon by gallon.  The turns 

the children make under the vast horse-chestnut tree 

grow wider and odder as if to keep 

this moment unenriched by savage candor



which more of us need to hear.   Either the clock

on the mantel is too loud or scarcely audible, 

or the newel-post on the landing has just come good and off, 

sending Father to the hardware store

for epoxy and dowels.  He wants to be right back, he said,

though he usually finds a reason to stay away.



Just as they discover it’s the wrong time to be here, 

Aunt Rosellen stumbles in dressed as a ballerina

and tells them she is happy they have come.

The glare through the curtains festers like old desire.

A riot of redbuds blisters the afternoon.

We realize we have tasted this all before.