An Undertaking:
Attendant
The world is only air
shining, granular, transparent/
fleeting breath, through which I see
time.
Jan Polkowski
Putting
you right, putting you all
right
while eleven more are prone and cold
and
under clean white sheets—
the
discreet tap on the closed door
a
small envelope slipped between
the
only crack I’ll allow—and the cool rush
of
fresh wind, the urge to throw it
all
wide and run right into the tide,
that quiet coming and going of the tide...
and
the gull on the pier post,
and
the pitch on that pier and in the palm
of
the hand of the man:
a face to go by to wake
you
with: a bit of a blush, but before that
a
suit, or for you, shorts and a starched white
shirt,
so heavy on the starch
that
for a moment all I smell is stiff
singed
sharp of starch—it’s all I want
to
smell, not the embalming, not the drain
buckets,
not the rouge, not the pomade—just starch.
And
beneath it, the line-dried warmth of sea-
wind,
and clean sheets.
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