Morning Verses
Gay Brewer
Her red poppies quiver
in their jar, as if frightened,
as she was yesterday
risking fence and field.
She had had to have them,
their petals were tissue.
The girl wears a yellow
blouse. She hurries to
compose words, hurries
before a knock on the door.
The birds temporarily
are silent. A bell clangs in
the valley. How many days
remain? How many
before she sees her friends,
they share her stories?
Outside the window her
mother walks in the garden
carrying a basket.
She brushes the poppies
with her fingertips.
Even her delicate hands
cannot feel the petals,
they are too light to exist.
A black cat circles the house.
Her store of bad luck
has turned so inward, she
scratches away her own hair.
In a shape signifying what?
The cat could be herself.
She hears her father's
falling easel, hears a ripping
canvas, his curses. For her
the mountains opened.
They invited her to see them.
She tastes the cigar in
his mouth, his Cuban
breakfast, strings and ashes.
Yesterday she petted the
dog, against all good advice.
What a lonely little animal!
She saw the red ticks
gorging inside its curved ear.
Here was a real lesson,
a lesson of life. Her hand
on its warm belly, grazing
between rows of purple teats.
Empty chairs surround a table
beside fig and olive trees.
Perhaps a party will take
place, perhaps already has,
her party, each boy traveling
alone for a single chance
at her company. She agrees
to meet them only as a group.
Beneath her room, the sisters
who clean their house
prepare today's meals, which
her mother will praise.
The muffled voices could be
laughter, the women joking
of their husbands, of the night
before, of what great and
needy gentlemen they became
after the wine was served.
The girl closes the volume
of private verses. She presses
a hand onto her skin.
Her palm feels cold, her
chest hot. She is irritated by
the fear of interruption.
All this time to herself, and
no solitude. Look at the sky!
What would she do today?
It was too gray to walk
the beach. Deep in the house,
a door closes. She hears
footsteps. She yearns for
them to turn in her direction.
