Bookish
Larkin said, “Home is so sad,” the bachelor,
master of form, meter, tone, hopelessness.
My favorite: “The Less Deceived,”
no, “The Whitsun Weddings,” no, “Church Going.”
The bachelor … After his death they upturned
his closet crammed with whiskey bottles, porno mags.
Frost, of course: “Where when you go,
they have to take you in.” Bishop: “I lost
three houses.” Dickinson: “In Winter in my room.”
I go on living in our same house where you died.
Yesterday, reading one of our favorites,
Jude The Obscure, you came to stay, to supervise
both of making our bed we slept in fifty years,
made love, made three children who would leave.
We kept that same mattress. I’m sleeping on it.
Today. I don’t think you’ll want to visit.
Mondays you’re usually busy in eternity
occupied with the start of a week in timelessness.
Alive, I’m doing what days down here require.
Shaving cream’s cool, supple white mask
breaks open the same old Peter in the mirror.
I lift the razor to my turned right cheek.
What, a touch across my hand, you’re back!
The wisp of you telling me: don’t cut yourself.
Ghost of a minute from the other side!
Will you stick around, make sure they’re snug,
the sheets at four corners of our bed,
then smooth the teal bedspread for the sun
to mazurka, here, where I’m living, living
living through, still, and it’s another day?