Pools

You can go on living with the blade
of nostalgia in your hearts forever,
my pale darlings. It changes nothing.

--------------- Chase Twichell, “The Blade of Nostalgia”

And now a fresh faint blue sky, a delicate enamel
filling in the trays of air between the telephone wires,

between window frames and curtain folds,
between lampposts and cornices;

and then my fingers on your breathing ribs.
Everything settles into long pools

when the outflow is stopped: this morning
the clouded water for my shaving shivered

as the razor dipped in it again and again,
and the soap fled away across its surface,

to be balked by a ceramic shore.
By the time I lift the plug it desires nothing more

than to cling to the sides of the basin; but once it thought
of the air that spills over snowy roofs,

of sea froth, and the scud of clouds on those dizzy nights
when the moon recuses itself.

I stand still in the shower and the unscraped
soap flows down my face and down my chest

I feel the light beat of drops against my eyelids.
I hold my hands to pool rinsing water

in the hollow between my breasts: my coarse silk
graying coat holds soap just like the sink.