La Brea

Early

It is very early now, no light yet, nor

sensation, apart from simple motions of walking:

discomfort in the chill air, the stiff walk

quick across cold floorboards, razor,

brushed lather and warm tap water off

my cheeks—the feel of bare wool on wrists

and throat—the hiss of the stove, and white coffee.

Alone in this house, I wonder if tabula rasa

ever existed at all. Lake Champlain looks flat,

black by starlight; even the sheaved winds

are flat as feathers on a sleeping raven's wing—

Later, forecast rains will toss down Smuggler's Notch

in silver skirtveils, hiss across the flatiron

lake like drops on a woodstove, into the night—

Tranquility

and hideous broom-flaps here, unfolding condors

knuckled to the vague bed rail, and hung door-

jamb anthropoid with clothes—In this appalling

light even physical objects fail, conform to older

recollection, night's La Brea, the glossy oil-pools. . . .

By breakfast all grotesques have quit their roaring,

pawing at the sky for light and release, followed

their immense tracks down sinkholes of their own

muddling until the only evidence

of dreams is gone, erratic haloes ravens

figured, just askim the water, rings, rings,

and love, your slender unstockinged feet scarcely

and always rough the nap of a newswept carpet

still, and this is not tranquility, not yet—