Sailing Alone Around the Room (2011)
“And best of all, the secret marrow, the invaded privacy of the animal prized out with a knife and swallowed down with cold, exhilarating wine.
I am swaying now in the hour after dinner, a citizen tilted back on his chair, a creature with a full stomach— something you don’t hear much about in poetry, that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door, small birds searching for berries in winter.
But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm, heav...y paw on my chest, and I can only close my eyes and listen to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance and the sound of my wife’s laughter on the telephone in the next room, the woman who cooked the savory osso buco, who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend while I linger here at the table with a hot, companionable cup of tea, feeling like one of the friendly natives, a reliable guide, maybe even the chief’s favorite son.
Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent carrying the stone of the world in his stomach; and elsewhere people of all nations stare at one another across a long, empty table.MoreLess
I am swaying now in the hour after dinner, a citizen tilted back on his chair, a creature with a full stomach— something you don’t hear much about in poetry, that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door, small birds searching for berries in winter.
But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm, heav...y paw on my chest, and I can only close my eyes and listen to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance and the sound of my wife’s laughter on the telephone in the next room, the woman who cooked the savory osso buco, who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend while I linger here at the table with a hot, companionable cup of tea, feeling like one of the friendly natives, a reliable guide, maybe even the chief’s favorite son.
Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent carrying the stone of the world in his stomach; and elsewhere people of all nations stare at one another across a long, empty table.MoreLess
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