Talking with my beloved in New York <br />I stood at the outdoor public telephone <br />in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt. <br />Someone had called it a man/woman <br />shirt. The phrase irked me. But then <br />I remembered that Rainer Maria <br />Rilke, who until he was seven wore <br />dresses and had long yellow hair, <br />wrote that the girl he almost was <br />"made her bed in his ear" and "slept him the world." <br />I thought, OK this shirt will clothe the other in me. <br />As we fell into long-distance love talk <br />a squeaky chittering started up all around, <br />and every few seconds came a sudden loud <br />buzzing. I half expected to find <br />the insulation on the telephone line <br />laid open under the pressure of our talk <br />leaking low-frequency noises. <br />But a few yards away a dozen hummingbirds, <br />gorgets going drab or blazing <br />according as the sun struck them, <br />stood on their tail rudders in a circle <br />around my head, transfixed <br />by the flower-likeness of the shirt. <br />And perhaps also by a flush rising into my face, <br />for a word -- one with a thick sound, <br />as if a porous vowel had sat soaking up <br />saliva while waiting to get spoken, <br />possibly the name of some flower <br />that hummingbirds love, perhaps <br />"honeysuckle" or "hollyhock" <br />or "phlox" -- just then shocked me <br />with its suddenness, and this time <br />apparently did burst the insulation, <br />letting the word sound in the open <br />where all could hear, for these tiny, irascible, <br />nectar-addicted puritans jumped back <br />all at once, as if the air gasped.<br /><br />Galway Kinnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/telephoning-in-mexican-sunlight/
