Two Poems: An Orange, A Syllable

Somewhere a poet is about to read his poem. He says to the audience: This poem is about ripe cherries and summer. A heavy pause before he continues. So it’s about sex. The audience chuckles. As he reads his poem about cherries and heat, my mind turns to the time we sat on the stoop, spitting cherry pits into a silver bowl. The child was asleep. We had escaped to the steps where we drank beer and tongued the stones out with a ping. Across the street a squirrel tumbled from a branch. We just happened to be facing that way when we saw it land on the hot sidewalk. Red dripped from our chins. Inside a body of steady breaths. Outside the soft rag of another.

*

I think of this poet again in another place, a later time, when I think I have almost forgotten him. A canoe opens its mouth to the clouds, waits for rain. Mint hull on water. From here it’s just a birthday cake floating on quiet glass. This poem is about rain and boats. So it’s about sex. I am laughing at the poet, at his cherries, and the heat that prickled his skin. Before the rain comes, I ask if you really believe what he said that night when he was reading his poems. How much of reality leaks into the space of a poem? You simply say, Poetry is about truth. Not fact. (Later, much later when you have forgotten about the poet and the cherries and the rain, when I quote yourself to you, you say: I sound like a pompous jackass.) Leaves pit-pat past our legs. They rush towards the water, hurried and bold. When we walk away from the boat, from the water, it is just autumn pouring down between us.