Closing Days

Closing Days

Sometimes I breathe and

the stars go by in their serene beatitudes,

never disturbing a weather-gray house

by the sea where I have hidden my life.

                                                                                William Stafford

                                                                                Assuming Control

Is it the same people who make the exhibit

                possible in it’s space, viewable I mean,

                who trace along the floor the path the light

                will take when the crowd arrives to eat it

                up all the way up the pant leg the knee

                the suit coat jacket tail the buttons (those

                buttons, something similar I’d seen in the quilts

                the women stitched to honor Nelson

                Mandela, not the same buttons and these

                are bronze they don’t open or close

anything but our imagination and never did but

                when Saint-Gaudens shaped them with his

                fingers and maybe wondered about the body

                of Lincoln and watched a stand-in model for him

                (because Lincoln’s already been shot remember

                and carried off into Spring-

                Field) the ribs rise with the clean Ascutney

                breeze and he needs to see each hair

                each pour each aspect of bone and tooth

                because he knows it’s the tooth that makes

                the jaw it’s the jaw that makes the chin

                it’s the chin that lifts the words and on

                and on down through the age of everything

                that’s civil and everything that’s not).  But

that bit of light that takes up the bronze button and some

                can see it depending on how tall they are

                depending on how distracted they are depending

                on the children that twirl and twirl

                in the facing gallery of the baroque exhibit

                in front of Cleopatra who’s just now ready

                to drop her pearl and Samson, no not Samson

                Solomon who has his sword and the two

                mothers are split in their truth and lies

                about who lives and who dies—all this light! It’s meant

to take us from the floor up, to pull our neck back as if

                we were on a tether and it was opening our throat

                to the knife like the one massive oil on canvas telling

                Bartholomew’s martyrdom in skin as he’s taken apart

                flay by flay—I’ve gone off again and wandering.

                I’d wanted something  much different when

                I started: because the exhibit is closing soon and each

                piece will be packed in crates of hay and taken

                away in the dark and taken up with someone

                else.  I’m not jealous.  No, I’m not. I can let go

                of Lincoln the Man or the busts of  Shaw of Sherman

                of Liberty of Clover, oh Jesus Clover—but if I could

sleep beneath them all...would that be possible? like someone

                finally coming home and they’re casketed under

                the pall and there’s one spotlight and maybe a bride

                or a groom, you choose, you do the choosing,

                when you see it, when you see that piece I’m making it

                right here for you, minus the bronze buttons, minus

                the strings of pearls, the oil, listen visit…I’ll let you know

                when it opens after Lincoln, listen…I’ll let you know.