~PATRICIA FARGNOLI~

"OH, SO YOU'RE DOING A HANDBOOK AGAIN"

---

 

            after John Ashbery


No, I’m doing a notebook and going to put you,
my love, in it with your splendid
Aran sweater and your walking stick.
Someday you will be a poem and famous
like the chain of islands off the coast
where seabirds hold down rocks
and watch the tourists clamor
among wild globes of flowers
and other incongruities spread across
unyielding trails to the highest brightest cliffs. 
No wonder that the passionate condolences
of your hands fit so well
into the stark unlined pages of my body;
inopportune because of the discrepancies,
yet welcome as the bed
in this rude accommodation
at the inn with few accouterments
saved only by its view of the crazed sea, and the winds
your voice carries across the stones.
 
 

© by Patricia Fargnoli