It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
This reminds me of one of Billy Collin's poems in the Discovery of Poetry book you recommended to me. I will post it up for the next reading.
ReplyDeleteThe timeframe from the beginning is really interesting and ties in at the end. The visual of the ripe melon in the sink before he wakes at 5am- a dream? I like the word "wander" as he goes through the house in observation- as if the poem, too, is wandering. The last line and description of "warm and steady sweetness" tying back into the description of the melon, possibly the dream world, intuition of direction.
I saw the melon as a analogy for the narrator's life. The melon is ripe, the day is ripe, but the narrator is like Simba: doesn't know who he is!
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