Brief

Not choosing is a fearful way.

My fingers agree; they touch.

My fingers touch the table

and once I chose the table

and the chair; once I caressed the fabric

of the chair and was excited

by the feel of the cloth. The lamp?

I picked it out to compliment the dusk.

I saw it: old and therefore holy. I saw it was

Chinese: intaglio of lotus at the base.

The lamp was green

like the ocean somewhere south of here.

I chose this northern plot.

I couldn't leave the house

and the light inside, and the stone

foundation: granite apparent now

that the plantings are all gone. I paid a man

to dig and haul them, poor dark yews,

somebody else's choice, and I'm not sorry.

I'm thinking of men and women comparing

this one's shoulders with that one's

silky belly. I imagine what they think:

I never choose; I'm never lonely.

They are only wrong and coughing

in their beds like owls, like poets,

the great, ecstatic crazies.

I've chosen to be harsh.

Now that you've left you know this;

now you unbutton your shirt

in rooms south of here.

There was no elegance left and I was shouting.

I stood near the washing machine and dryer.

Catbirds fought in the hemlock.

I wanted liberty imbedded in desire, but

a girl pounding clothes on rocks

was the one you dreamed swaying

like a swimming fish entering your net

suspended from the riverbank. Such pliancy

and quiet. It was sweet, the silence. Over and over,

I woke us up. I was righteous; I woke us up.