DOVE, Rita


Dawn Revisited

Imagine you wake up

with a second chance: The blue jay

hawks his pretty wares

and the oak still stands, spreading

glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.

How good to rise in sunlight,

in the prodigal smell of biscuits -

eggs and sausage on the grill.

The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open

to a blank page. Come on,

shake a leg! You'll never know

who's down there, frying those eggs,

if you don't get up and see.

American Smooth

We were dancing—it must have

been a foxtrot or a waltz,

something romantic but

requiring restraint,

rise and fall, precise

execution as we moved

into the next song without

stopping, two chests heaving

above a seven-league

stride—such perfect agony,

one learns to smile through,

ecstatic mimicry

being the sine qua non

of American Smooth.

And because I was distracted

by the effort of

keeping my frame

(the leftward lean, head turned

just enough to gaze out

past your ear and always

smiling, smiling),

I didn’t notice

how still you’d become until

we had done it

(for two measures?

four?)—achieved flight,

that swift and serene

magnificence,

before the earth

remembered who we were

and brought us down.


Parsley - The Cane Fields

There is a parrot imitating spring

in the palace, its feathers parsley green.

Out of the swamp the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General

searches for a word; he is all the world

there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through

and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—

out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.

The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.

There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: ‘perejil’.

Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining

out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.

And we lie down. For every drop of blood

there is a parrot imitating spring.

Out of the swamp the cane appears.


Borderline Mambo

As if the lid stayed put on the marmalade.
As if you could get the last sip of champagne
out of the bottom of the fluted glass.
As if we weren't all dying, as if we all weren't
going to die some time, as if we knew for certain
when, or how. As if the baseball scores made sense
to the toddler. As if the dance steps mattered, or there's a point
where they don't. For instance wheelchair. Heart flutter.
Oxygen bottle mounted on the septuagenarian's back
at the state ballroom competitions—that's Manny,
still pumping the mambo with his delicious slip
of an instructor, hip hip hooray. Mambo, for instance,
if done right, gives you a chance to rest: one beat in four.
One chance in four, one chance in ten, a hundred, as if
we could understand what that means. Hooray. Keep
pumping. As if you could keep the lid on a secret
once the symptoms start to make sense. A second
instance, a respite. A third. Always that hope.
If we could just scrape that last little bit
out, if only it wouldn't bottom out
before they can decode the message
sent to the cells. Of course it matters when, even though
(because?) we live in mystery. For instance
Beauty. Love. Honor. As if we didn't like
secrets. Point where it hurts. Of course we'll tell.


The Narcissus Flower

I remember my foot in its frivolous slipper,

A frightened bird… not the earth unzipped

but the way I could see my own fingers and hear

myself scream as the blossom incinerated.

And though nothing could chasten

the plunge, this man

adamant as a knife easing into

the humblest crevice, I found myself at

the center of a calm so pure, it was hate.

The mystery is, you can eat fear

before fear eats you,

you can live beyond dying –

and become a queen

whom nothing surprises.

Daystar

She wanted a little room for thinking;

but she saw diapers steaming on the line,

a doll slumped behind the door.

So she lugged a chair behind the garage

to sit out the children’s naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch –

the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,

a floating maple leaf. Other days

she stared until she was assured

when she closed her eyes

she’d see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared

pouting from the top of the stairs.

And just what was mother doing

out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later

that night when Thomas rolled over and

lurched into her, she would open her eyes

and think of the place that was hers

for an hour – where

she was nothing,

pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

The Bistro Styx

She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness

as she paused just inside the double

glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape

billowing dramatically behind her. What's this,

I thought, lifting a hand until

she nodded and started across the parquet;

that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,

from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite signature of her shoes.

"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though

she wasn't, sliding into the chair, her cape

tossed off in a shudder of brushed steel.

We kissed. Then I leaned back to peruse

my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole.

"How's business?" I asked, and hazarded

a motherly smile to keep from crying out:

Are you content to conduct your life

as a cliché and, what's worse,

an anachronism, the brooding artist's demimonde?

Near the rue Princesse they had opened

a gallery cum souvenir shop which featured

fuzzy off-color Monets next to his acrylics, no doubt,

plus beared African drums and the occasional miniature

gargoyle from Notre Dame the Great Artist had

carved at breakfast with a pocket knife.

"Tourists love us. The Parisians, of course"--

she blushed--"are amused, though not without

a certain admiration . . ."

The Chateaubriand

arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute

in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming

like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy;

one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.

"Admiration for what?" Wine, a bloody

Pinot Noir, brought color to her cheeks. "Why,

the aplomb with which we've managed

to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced

her to pose nude for his appalling canvases,

faintly futuristic landscapes strewn

with carwrecks and bodies being chewed

by rabid cocker spaniels. "I'd like to come by

the studio," I ventured, "and see the new stuff."

"Yes, if you wish . . ." A delicate rebuff

before the warning: "He dresses all

in black now. Me, he drapes in blues and carmine--

and even though I think it's kinda cute,

in company I tend toward more muted shades."

She paused and had the grace

to drop her eyes. She did look ravishing,

spookily insubstantial, a lipstick ghost on tissue,

or as if one stood on a fifth-floor terrace

peering through a fringe of rain at Paris'

dreaming chimney pots, each sooty issue

wobbling skyward in an ecstatic oracular spiral.

"And he never thinks of food. I wish

I didn't have to plead with him to eat. . . ." Fruit

and cheese appeared, arrayed on leaf-green dishes.

I stuck with café crème. "This Camembert's

so ripe," she joked, "it's practically grown hair,"

mucking a golden glob complete with parsley sprig

onto a heel of bread. Nothing seemed to fill

her up: She swallowed, sliced into a pear,

speared each tear-shaped lavaliere

and popped the dripping mess into her pretty mouth.

Nowhere the bright tufted fields, weighted

vines and sun poured down out of the south.

"But are you happy?" Fearing, I whispered it

quickly. "What? You know, Mother"--

she bit into the starry rose of a fig--

"one really should try the fruit here."

I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill.