look out the window in upstate New York, see

the Mediterranean stretching out below me

down the rocky hillside at Faro, three

years, two months, fourteen days earlier .

8:25 A. M.

Rosemary gone back to sleep, pink & white . I

stand at the livingroom window drinking coffee, open

the doors to the balcony . Warmth beginning, tho

I wrap my hands around the cup, count

fishing boats in the sunglare, moving shoreward now

slowly, or

sitting there motionless on the flat sea .

a fat blue arm stretches out from the coast, ripples

where wind and currents show

muscle below the blue skin of sea

stretched out below me .

The coffee's

cold toward the end of the cup . I go

back to the kitchen for more hot . put

orange in bathrobe pocket, reach for knife, return

to the balcony with the fresh cup where the flat blue sea

fills my eye in the sunglare . stretches out below me.

The Southern Tier: the maple outside the window

warms in the early sun . red buds at the ends of branches

commence their slow bursting . Green soon

Joan moves

her legs against mine in the hall, goes down to

start my egg . Carlos thumps the lower stairs . We move.

All our farewells al-

ready prepared inside us . aaaall our

deaths we carry inside us, double-yolked, the

fragile toughness of the shell . it makes

sustenance possible, makes love possible

as the red buds break against the sunglight

possible green, as legs move against legs

possible softnesses . The soft-boiled

egg is ready now .

Now we eat.
19 . IV . 71