Aftertaste

Whether an act of grace was a finder's fee,
whether the joy will be stained or wholly new,

whether the admiration will leap as high, or higher,
whether the body will please, or more, or less:

these are questions I can face with equanimity,
if slightly hard. The zest of the fruit, say,

where the vitamins are. This much
I knew when I sniffed the rind.

I even knew it would be good for me
(“five points from Gryffindor, for being

an insufferable know-it-all.”) So.
But I am lost today, and all days,

wandering by the river where the old
concrete granaries are split and weeping,

silos opening gasping mouths to the sky,
where the ships no longer come, where

the boot of a longshoreman would sound as strange
on the lingering cement as the knock

in the bud of a stethoscope, as the murmur
of a heart that's not quite sound.