April 14, 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker
Morning Poem
Robin Becker
Listen. It’s morning. Soon I’ll see your hand reach
for my watch, the water will agitate in the kettle,
but listen. Traffic. I want your dreams first. And
to slide my leg beneath yours before the day opens.
Wait. We slept late. You’ll be moody, the phone
will ring, someone wanting something. Let me put
my hands in your hair. Who I was last night I would
be again. This is how the future holds me, how depression
wakes with us; my body shelters it. Let me
put my head on your breast. I know nothing lasts.
I would try to hold you back, not out of meanness
but fear. Oh my practical, my worldly-wise. You
know how the body falters, falls in on itself. Tell me
that we will never want from each other what we
cannot have. Lie. It’s morning.
[I love how she alternates long and short sentences here to create the cadence of the poem. And the Shakespearean double reading of ‘Lie’ in the last line.]
A year ago: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye
Two years ago: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke
Three years ago: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel
