Memory Theater
The shade of my little lamp tints the air
blue and the air fills with a scent like eau
de vie and musk. Can’t find my shoes. Forget
them. Torn sheet? Forget that. The soft quilt drifts,
my cast-off reading glasses tilt sideways—
slippery sheet, blind glasses, orphan shoes:
a stage for drunken love though I’m sober.
My room—what is it? Waking memory
theater. That April when I wandered
lonely as nothing, it was never those
daffodils that blazed on my soul. It
wasn’t men, though I flirted with some. It
was fear like the trembling of joy. It was
me on that dream-silent, fence-bound street.