One of a Number of Good Intentions

Consider that if you'd listened for years, peered

at the stray fact left ajar long ago until it grew

transparent, secrets might lose their allure

and you would find yourself yearning for a shallow

set of facts about something complex. How,

on winter afternoons at the museum, the parquet floor

and oval of sky would intrigue you more

than the paintings with their allegorical significance.

Since you would be unable to find a word

scraped clean of connotation, what comfort

you would take from opera, passionately sung

in a language you don't know. Other times

you would be moved to tears by an empty pause,

two cranial hands that asked nothing of you.

Though unlikely, it is possible that someone

might try to speak to you, say tree

and mean your tree, the willow, the day

you hid under its pale skirt as adult voices

shook all the window panes in the house.

Say cat and mean the Manx that belonged

to the first woman you loved, the August evenings

on an apartment fire escape. Or perhaps

someone would whisper time and mean

your mother's gold wristwatch, its crystal

cloudy from wear, the perfume around her:

kid gloves, cigarettes, the tangerine peels

on the front seat of her green Oldsmobile.

I, too, would try. Hoping that then I might

say love and mean mine, for you, for whatever

would remain after l'd dipped a white cloth

in ammonia and wiped from the framed glass

dust, images, memories; mine,

for whatever's utter, whatever's left.