Cellar Poem; New York City Ballet, 1963; What I Did One Sunday Morning
Cellar Poem
—Gaston Bachelard
Hoarder of darkness. Potatoes, mold,
secrets embezzled by spiders. Check
stubs belonging to history. Treasured
tatters: the tee shirts of the beloved
dead: a sister’s beauty folded into squares.
Old maps, badly creased geographies
of forgotten journeys. Trays of gizmos—
screws, clamps, washers. Instructions
to a washing machine gone to dust.
A grammar of chaos and detritus. Water-
damaged dictionaries. A Child’s Book
of Verses scribbled upon a century ago
by a child who grew up to mother five
before she died. Rust of saws, broken
fixtures, broken lampshade, broken
vacuum. Clothes racks, sewer pipes,
heat vents, water heater, electric box,
socks stuffed in cracks, crickets, a yellow
snow shovel. Old boots. An old rug.
The furnace breathing hot, as if in lust.
New York City Ballet, 1963
High, cheap, city-sponsored seats, balcony
cantilevered over balcony. Dancers
dance in the distance, glowing, tiny as if
on TV. They dazzle my sister and me.
I’m twenty, she’s seventeen. We’ve never
heard the word Balanchine. Intermission.
We move down and down, deliberate.
We wait for the posh patrons to return.
We sit right up front. The dancers move
like liquid or light. Then one leaps,
seems almost to take flight. The audience
gasps, rises in rapture. That dancer
is old now or dead. Art haunts my life.
What I Did One Sunday Morning
Got a thick book down off the shelf.
Settled into the window seat to read.
Watched dust dance in a sunbeam.
Read a page of Bleak House.
Copied out the passage on page 5
that begins Fog everywhere. Counted
the number of times Dickens put
the word fog in that passage: 13.
Took a nap. Got up. Greased
the skillet. Made pancakes. Sipped
another mug of coffee. Put on
Kind of Blue. Tracked a squirrel
out the window, scampering up
the vine maple. With the sun, painted
the cedar tree 13 shades of green.