Domestic Life — Gregory Orr
from: The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems
1. TODAY
Open yourself up: today
that's no different than opening
a refrigerator door: large chunks
of meat, eggs
scattered on the metal racks,
and cowering in the back:
a tiny, frightened woman.
You are huge and clumsy;
you fumble for her, breaking
all the eggs, and she eludes you,
and you don't feel a thing
except cold inside.
2. SOMETHING
Something is burning inside you
like a rose made from cellophane,
like something white burning
in a snowfield: no flames,
all you can see is the shadow
of smoke on the snow.
3. BEFORE DAWN
Your wife left before you woke.
She scratched a note on your back;
you try to read it with mirrors.
You decide to talk to the cat,
but when you open your mouth
honey-colored wasps fly out.
The blood in the lightbulbs
burns less brightly.
4. THE WATERFALL
Failing to hold on to things,
a man can become
a waterfall.
His friends stare,
silent and aghast,
as he disappears
over the cliff, carrying
off his books, his wife,
all his furniture.
5. FALL CLEANING
This morning, the almost weightless bodies
of insects drift down
from the ceiling. It's seasonal;
you have to expect that sort of thing
when you live in a burrow under the earth.
Yesterday a package arrived
in the mail; it contained bird beaks
in assorted colors and sizes.
Some are small like yellow thorns,
but others are larger;
I slip those over my fingers,
clack them together and dance
around the room in my gray bathrobe.
The insects revive. I am their god.
They dance after me up the tunnel
and out into the autumn woods.
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