“A free-verse poem, unrhymed, in the style of John Ashbury's early poems in "The Double Dream of Spring"”

In the blue drift of the living room  
evening claims the pale edge of the carpet,  
a small comfort lost in the angled shadow  
of the standing lamp—tall, irreproachable.  
Music plays somewhere above the plaster,  
the seconds spill—unrelated coins  
on the table with a glass of water  
forgotten, as if thirst had become rhetorical.

What we remember is sediment:  
the stiff parade of Sunday papers,  
the faint aftertaste of plum on the tongue,  
not the thing itself, but its outline,  
submerged, a silty question carried up  
with a tide of lists, the ciphers  
of old birthdays jotted in a datebook  
you find by accident near the broken clock.

Outside, the late sun gropes at the branches,  
handless, eager, loving nothing in particular.  
It is almost the hour when a key will turn  
(or not), when someone—maybe you—  
will weigh the cost of a plain white envelope,  
sealed, and in it a word or gesture  
that would have been easy  
had the moment not misplaced itself.

The pages tilt one after the other.  
What I want to say dissolves  
before the arrival of your answer—  
which is, perhaps, not necessary.  
Beneath the faint hum of the city  
spreads an orchard of silences,  
each ripe with its own indistinct  
morning, drifting, a hope  
carried quietly into the next room.

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