Last Century's Couple / White Things by William Doreski

Last Century's Couple

The room whispers to itself

in a hundred subtle tones.

Your dress hangs in a closet

in a panorama of sighs.

The ordinary light can’t ease

the sorrow of the bedclothes

crumpled to suggest the ghosts

that smoke from the graveyards

every resurrection eve.

Maybe after the moon rises

and wood fires sizzle in houses

enlivened with small children

the dark will seem less daunting.

Today I walked a dozen miles

in a forest devoid of birds.

The silence so inflated me

that like a great parade balloon

I arose from the leaf-litter

and assumed a posture ripe enough

to propel me into a future

in which absence is no longer news.

You preferred a day of books

thicker than legs of lamb and

almost as meaty. I assume

you learned something angular

so you shed your dress in a huff

and crawled into bed and wept.

Now the seams in the sky open

to reveal that pearly undercoat

we’ve always hoped to acquire.

But instead of consoling ourselves

in each other’s bodily aura

we pose on the cusp of extinction

as if enjoying this moment

of competing shades of musk.

White Things

Things you’ve spray-painted white

and hung from trees in the woods:

coffee pot, harmonica, comb,

toothbrush, adjustable wrench,

and my old Pentax camera.

Finding these objects adrift

like ghosts of themselves startles

and even frightens me a little.

The cold sun effloresces orange

like something from a greenhouse.

Small animals sulk and skulk

and challenge me to spot them

in the corners of my eyes.

The woods seem alive except

for the specters you’ve dangled

here and there. Do you believe

that the forest is too ugly

to appreciate itself without

this post-aesthetic display?

The camera saddens me. Often

through prism and lens I saw

your smile polish to a shine

that dazzled and confused the world.

And that comb that daily traced

a path through your nest of hair,

the harmonica neither of us

could master. The white things

sway in the hard autumn wind,

beyond utility or regret,

too innocent to protest—                                                   

their slightly grainy texture

like Renaissance marble left

unfinished at the sculptor’s death

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has published three critical studies. His poetry has appeared in many journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His new poetry collection is A Black River, A Dark Fall (Splash of Red, 2018).