NEARLY 8 AM ALREADY

 

NEARLY 8 AM ALREADY

and I sit with my empty yogurt cup

looking at the Rilke poem

from the Book of Hours,

Part One, the Monastic Life,

Karen’s name written

in the margins, talking

to myself as I read, She who

reconciles the ill-marked threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully

into a single cloth--falling

into her blanket, her sewing

machine dream-humming

in my ear, it feels given to me,

these poems to God, come

first through the muse.

As I write opening lines

in the notebook, returning

to the poem, I find another

image of Karen, I say, Here,

here I am the partner

of her loneliness. I have searched

the essential tombs

of monologues, have discovered

nothing of her quiet soliloquies--

that dash following cloth,

like torn silk, plain inner lining,

shiver of extravagance

of the kimono.

--for Karen, midweek in August,

2022,

Jim