Nothing by Design Read Online Free PDF Page A

consoling.
    How many years ago
    was that? ten?—and how few
    games did we play each year?
    One day we stopped. But when?
    I think I was the first
    to notice poison oak
    where the balls were prone to land.
    After the net frame broke
    we knew it was the end,
    though there were nights we’d throw
    a tablecloth or two
    on top for a barbecue.
    All-weather? So far it’s stood
    as a tottering monument
    to the bumblers we remain;
    it’s stood there in the rain
    and, through the kitchen window
    in winter, as an efficient
    means to measure snow.
    I’ve liked that. That’s been good.

INSTRUMENTAL RIDDLES
    Nothing to shake a stick at,
    hollow inside, I’m anything but shallow.
    The deeper I am, the louder
    silence is struck a blow.
                                             drum
    Love often looks like me—
    two lovers, and then three—
    although, in love, the third stays out of view.
    I play upstage. I can be quiet, too.
                                             triangle
    I live on a limited scale.
    Homeless, I collapse and wheeze
    on the subway. As if you care!
    Sorry to be so sentimental,
    but buddy, please,
    can you spare a dime?
    Otherwise you may have to bear
    the polka, one more time.
                                             accordion
    Shaped much like an angel’s wing,
    like angel hair my lengths of string,
    I’m strummed by angels as they sing.
                                             harp
    In nursery school, before you learned to read,
    you played like Pan upon a simple reed.
    My name says what I do—
    I bring your earliest memories back to you.
                                             recorder

NO SECOND TRY
    Why should I blame her that she filled my days
    With misery…
                             — W. B. YEATS , “No Second Troy”
    Why should I blame him that he filled his days
    With mistresses, or that he came home late
    To meet most ignorant trust with smiling ways,
    Such thoughtful gifts, and claims that I looked great—
    Whatever that meant, though clearly not desire?
    What help if I’d been wiser, with a mind
    Simply to hurl his laundry in the fire
    Rather than buy his tall tales with a kind
    Solicitude and a deluded kiss,
    Having cleaned his house from stem to stern?
    Why, who else could he use, a guy like this?
    Was there another wife for him to spurn?

V
 
    BED OF LETTERS
    I was angry with my friend:
    I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
    I was angry with my foe:
    I told it not, my wrath did grow.
    — WILLIAM BLAKE ,
    “A Poison Tree”

STRING OF PEARLS
    The pearls my mother gave me as a bride
    rotted inside.
    Well, not the pearls, but the string.
    One day I was putting
    them on, about thirty years on,
    and they rattled onto the floor, one by one…
    I’m still not sure I found them all.
    As it happened, I kept a white seashell
    on my vanity table. It could serve as a cup
    where, after I’d scooped the lost pearls up,
    I’d save them, a many-sister
    haven in one oyster.
    A female’s born with all her eggs,
    unfolds her legs,
    then does her dance, is lovely, is the past—
    is old news as the last
    crinkle-foil-wrapped sweet
    in the grass of the Easter basket.
    True? Who was I? Had I unfairly classed
    myself as a has-been? In the cloister
    of the ovary, when
    released by an extra dose of estrogen,
    my chances for love dwindled, one by one.
    But am I done?

THE GAZEBO
    It’s my last day at the house.
    My last time wandering the backyard.
    I’m not aware I want to crush anything.
    My boots crunch through the desiccated,
    frosted grass, a sound like stubbing out
    cigarette after cigarette.
    I climb to the top of the hill
    and unlatch the creaky gate in the fence
    that frames the swimming pool.
    I don’t see it, but there’s a crust
    of ice beneath the canvas cover.
    Plus