Complacencies of the Peignoir*

Enter the Mermaid Room

Instead of around the neck, drape scarves over doorway stains.



I lay in bed this morning, casual. When she screamed a thin, long nearly ecstatic sound, I knew it was a seizure. You know what we do. Later, I told a friend, and she asked whether I was scared. No, I said, I am hard and resigned.








While listening to another person (not Lou) sing take a walk on the wild side, sit at a light in Silver Lake and look forward. A flock of birds flies over, maybe 50 of them, their wings casting shadows. They circle and swoop. A convention that settles on a wire. Birds on a wire. Why? Is their path ordained or are they, pardon the pun, just winging it?





Too Many Birds






The Everyday Enchantment of Music

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound,
which was polished until it became music. Then the music was
polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when
tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was
polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty
home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the
music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at
the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was
thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the
memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what
happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would
also begin.

Mark Strand












*One of my favorite phrases, from the poem Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens