Morning sounds

American Poetry Review, The, Sep/Oct 2005 by Hicok, Bob

The slight scrape and click as her coffee cup's

set on the counter suggests tumblers hide

in the blue atoms of the cup. My wife's pajamas

are made as much of holes as of sleep.

It's the day after the word cancer was put away.

My dad doesn't have it, the clocks don't,

though my mind is on crutches. I rummage for a sound

to compare to the Canada geese that came in low

this morning over the green field,

they flew up the backs of their shadows and filled

the holler with the pressure of their lungs.

In my reflex for metaphor, I link the geese

to the turbulence inside my mother's voice

on the phone this week, but the joining fails,

the geese were sharp, were metal, while my mother spoke

like wind against dry leaves. I look where I memorized

the moon last night, at the hole in the day.

Of all the manuals we could write, how about one

for getting back to the tulips, to having thighs

again, to looking at a window and feeling

I'm on the inside of a parenthesis.

Someone counts breaths. I agree to distract this person

if I meet her, if I become him, by kissing her ear,

by biting my wrist. For a second, my mind hovers

around the bird feeder, becomes the blue

and orange bird we can't find in any of our books.

That the refusal to fall comes brightly painted

and singing should tell me something

about what fear is for. There's so much light,

I can hear it push against itself to get inside

the house. If I could listen to my wife's head

it would still be dreaming. Everything vibrates.

There's probably a sound to death that we never

have the chance to think resembles water

falling back into the sky. I say good morning

once more to my wife just to make her speak.