In the skull kept on the desk. <br />In the spider-pod in the dust. <br /> <br />Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves, <br />Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves <br /> <br />His house in the morning, <br />When he returns in the evening <br /> <br />He will find Socrates waiting <br />On the doorstep. Buddha the stick <br /> <br />You use to clear the path, <br />And Buddha the dog-doo you flick <br /> <br />Away with it, nowhere or in each <br />Several thing you touch: <br /> <br />The dollar bill, the button <br />That works the television. <br /> <br />Even in the joke, the three <br />Words American men say <br /> <br />After making love. Where's <br />The remote? In the tears <br /> <br />In things, proximate, intimate. <br />In the wired stem with root <br /> <br />And leaf nowhere of this lamp: <br />Brass base, aura of illumination, <br /> <br />Enlightenment, shade of grief. <br />Odor of the lamp, brazen. <br /> <br />The mind waiting in the mind <br />As in the first thing to hand.<br /><br />Robert Pinsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/first-things-to-hand/
