For no reason and half-asleep <br />in the supine dark, I think <br />of my work at Ford, visits with <br />workmates to the lake house, <br />my first meeting with you. <br /> <br />I think of the bay windows <br />where you sat feet tucked under. <br /> <br />My lathe operator brow <br />taking you in, hod carrier <br />shoulders hunched, my claw hammer <br />hand touching your shoulder, <br />dancing. <br /> <br />God on the lips of your empress <br />mother. A ruby bowl of buds, <br />fur throws beside the untuned <br />piano, music sheets scattered on the <br />oak floor, powder on a woman. <br /> <br />I impose myself under the Japon <br />masques and a Remington Indian <br />on the wall, my first painting lesson <br />and dance, Your devil red lipstick, <br />brush stroke of perfume. <br />Grapes passed 'round, card games, <br />a ringing dnner bell. <br /> <br /> <br />Your bold walk of a harem dancer, <br />the zebra couch, half-closed eyes <br />as you sucked a peach fetched <br />from Ford's Rouge plant. <br /> <br />I posed for you naked from the waist-up, <br />a hairy ape steaming from the coal forge. <br /> <br />Memory like a night visitor <br />rustles on the stoop. <br /> <br />Ah, a dozen rains. Furrowed eaves <br />awash in the disheveled past, <br /> <br />a linet lifts from the gorse bush, <br />workers shamble off and in my mind <br />the lake resounds in a feeble glimmer. <br /> <br />Lay-off notices are posted, <br />death announcements in the paper, <br />a TV plays all the monotonous afternoon, <br />my pension from a bureau <br />somewhere, the lake shrunk by half, <br />the house a lodge and you married well, <br />no longer young as a cherry orchard.<br /><br />Bernard Henrie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lake-house-after-lay-offs-at-the-ford-plant/
