LOVELY DAY
The satisfaction
finally of a good poop
became a calling
after washing his hands
of his wife to ask
about lunch on the steps
of the museum.
In the shushing
of shoes against marble
as people ran
to art, he enjoyed
his wife’s meat-loaf
more than his mother’s
for the first time, the test
not her meat-loaf for dinner
but how it tastes
suddenly in a sandwich.
He lifted the sandwich
as he might champagne
for a toast: to a long life,
to a beautiful woman, to sincerity
catching fire with the avant-garde.
Instead of going back to work,
she downtown, he up, they held hands
in front of the scooters
at the scooter store, each thinking
of an Italian road,
his wending up a mountain, hers
keeping company with the sea.
They walked so far
they reached where the city
ended, tall grass
rising exactly where the sign
said on one side
that you are leaving, on the other
that you have arrived,
though you, you’ve probably
never been here, where they made love
half in and half out
of the grass, in a place
neither coming or going, though really,
you shouldn’t be watching this,
now should you.
—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
__________
Bob Hicok: “I think of myself as a failed writer. There are periods of time when I’ll be happy with a given poem or a group of poems, but I, for the most part, detest my poems. I like writing. I love writing, and I believe in myself while I am writing; I feel limitless while I’m writing.” (web)
