At My Desk

the live nerve of recollection

we will hear it

as if for the first time.

Make no mistake, this is only

music, shading with evening

into a minor key.

Whole flocks of birds rush up

spreading their night wings

as the harpist, that angel

who guarded the gates

in strict black, sweeps

her arm from E to G to high C,

and the bowing stranger

lifts his wand, letting

the curtains part.

AT MY DESK

To William Stafford

How many times

I have sat this way

with the poem's intractable silence

between me and the world,

with the tree outside the window

refusing translation:

my leaves are more than syllables

it seems to say.

I think of you

miles west

floating on the tide of language

so easily, giving only

- a scissor kick now and then,

coming to shore

some unexpected

but hospitable place.

LINDA PASTAN

Still we share between us

a certain stubbornness,

rising each morning

to the blank page,

climbing the ladder of light

at the window all day,

listening, both of us,

as hard as we can.

WAITING ROOM

On line once, waiting

for a Greyhound bus

I stood behind a woman

with the same look

my father wore for weeks,

waiting to die.

And I thought

we practice

all our lives

waiting

on supermarket lines

burdened by produce,

by telephones

whose mute refusals

make silence

absolute;

we wait under clocks

with insect numbers

and arrows pointing

nowhere, in doctors' offices

thumbed over

like old magazines. Time is

the lover here, breathing

down your neck,

and when you need

him most, he'll disappear.

It was like this caught