To become a knot untied, a bowline cut, a sheepshank slithered from its shape. To be unpolished brass, a deck unmopped,a porthole fogging with the weather. To be unstriped at the shoulder. To be a hand without salute, a body left in its unease.To be unmustering, unstanding at attention. To be not as you were …
atque in perpetuum, fr¯ater, av¯e atque val¯e. —Catullus When it’s over, he wants to leave without glasses raised togetherat his going, no last salute or sir. I admit to gratitude.I’ve never stood at ease in the uniform stillness of those wives,dependents as they’re known, the watered silk of their voicesat a ball, or the brides …
Even in the dark, their flowers tilt toward the last place they felt the light.They bend on narrow stems, their blossoms fringed like the hems of party dresses.We have waited too long to plant them. So they bloom in pots on our patio, the frost-time over now, and they leantoward summer, long months of scorch …
Pretty in small patches, its clustersnot quite blue but a shade of purple sky, the plant can spread too quicklyif allowed, undemocratic in its impulse to possess the garden. Lately, I worry about anything inclined to power—the wood violets like petechiaein the blanched gaze of the lawn, the spurge that chokes by tangling,the bitter cress …
1. The chair was designed to withstand knocks and blows, the biting waters of the sea. 2. It’s known as the 1006 Navy Chair, first built by Emeco, the Electric Machine and Equipment Company, in collaboration with Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America. 3. Commissioned in 1944 by the US Navy to be used on …