Another Easter Monday

Another Easter Monday: After Looking for Bishop in Worcester

The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun

rose from the sea,

and there was one of it and one of me

                                                           Crusoe in England                                                           

                                                                                Elizabeth Bishop

Frist day back and all I can say is

will you look at that

ladybug tug the dust she’s picked up

in some corner of the desk!

She’s (or he but how

do you tell) struggling up the deck

of post it notes and that

tangle of fur, chuffed up rug, some

cotton lopped off my Walt

Whitman t-shirt I don’t know what

all else.  But I’ve been

gone, I’ve lost what I’m expected

to look for, all these days

away (in a dark I can’t name

or explain) and all I can say is hey!

stay! let me take you under my glass

and look on you some, let me watch

you shake away that flake

of someone else’s skin. 

Yesterday I walked in

the hot Easter sun and watched

the trunks of trees, watched their empty

canopies (it’s spring, but just) rise

up the thunder storm sky because I’d wanted

(we wanted, my husband, compass

he is, found) to put my rock on your head-

stone, wanted some of something

near to Nova Scotia to top you off.  Moss

and cobwebs have grown, have laid down

on the crown of you.  You were not easy

to find. finding Lowell on Saturday

was a walk in the woods.  Finding you...

I just read your "Crusoe
in England"

and maybe his day back, his first day

after all those years gone in volcanoes,

in guano, in the bleats of goats, made him

knock his face against something too,

against something comforting to be

able to say I brought you away

I prayed to you, God you were to me,

a sharp and oily

blade I made my promise true

to you and now, now, if mockery

were a stone---if I could hold you alone

over that lone volcano---

and remember how we forged something

there?  would you show me now

to you?

When you finally died in Boston in 1979

you’d already died a thousand and one more

times.  You’d made it

art, you’d made it have legs, you’d made it

strip naked so you could slap it

on the face.  It laid dead on the bottom

of the cage, like your favorite bird.

Whatever, finally.  Did you want to

stay (because now you’re there

forever) with a father and mother who

never knew you, whom you never knew?

On a property bordering boarded up

factories?  Wafted smog?  Did you? Even
though you asked?