These period pieces

Because of formatting, this poem is available as a two-page .pdf dowloadable here.

His eyes are amber and slate

At the next table over, a man. He is small

of jaw; some might go further--I think

too far--and say "like a rat or a mouse."

But no. He is too lean and upright

and, in his delicately quarried eyes,

too deliberate and attentive: he is too bright.

It is true that, when he smiles--as often--

or laughs, although little sound comes out,

he shows a great many yellowed teeth. But we

should see how rarely he blinks, and each time

dares to think how bright and upright

is the woman across the table, his daughter: 

he couldn't be prouder or--what amounts

to the same--more relieved. The feeling is plain

in the granite-in-rainfallen grey of his eyes.

He is clearly surprised at having raised her.

He blinks and, thinking back, he wonders

what it would have been to have been raised

by a woman who … --he blinks-- or had

the strength --and thinks, despite that radiant

glow, of a woman bent over below

fluorescent lights, a linoleum kitchen

in colorless white and green, a white

that can never come clean, be it scoured, the bruised

and reddening silence--no sound is allowed

to come out--the desperate acceptance and over-

exposure to slams of cupboards and drawers

--he blinks-- the flatware rattled, the occasional

shattering glass --he thinks-- of feverish

polish and impossibility of shine.

His eyes are amber and slate --he thinks,

somehow it is not too late-- and the sun

through passing clouds --he has saved, if not

his mother, then another young woman after all this time.

(Edited and begun 10 April 2011; directly inspired by a vision, 9 April, of a patron at the local coffee shop; indirectly inspired--already envisioned--by the bright but clouded natural light, and its effects on the skin of tablemates, at meal 3 April. Many thanks to the visible and otherwise perceptible beauty, so deeply lived-in, of all involved.)