I can feel she has got out of bed. <br />That means it is seven a.m. <br />I have been lying with eyes shut, <br />thinking, or possibly dreaming, <br />of how she might look if, at breakfast, <br />I spoke about the hidden place in her <br />which, to me, is like a soprano's tremolo, <br />and right then, over toast and bramble jelly, <br />if such things are possible, she came. <br />I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it. <br />I imagine her hair would fall about her face <br />and she would become apparently downcast, <br />as she does at a concert when she is moved. <br />The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyes <br />and there she is, next to the bed, <br />bending to a low drawer, picking over <br />various small smooth black, white, <br />and pink items of underwear. She bends <br />so low her back runs parallel to the earth, <br />but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun. <br />The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking, <br />lift toward the east—what can I say? <br />Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth. <br />Her breasts fall full; the nipples <br />are deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron bars <br />of the gate under the earth where those who could not love <br />press, wanting to be born again. <br />I reach out and take her wrist <br />and she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas. <br />Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again, <br />rummaging in the same low drawer. <br />The clock shows eight. Hmmm. <br />With huge, silent effort of great, <br />mounded muscles the earth has been turning. <br />She takes a piece of silken cloth <br />from the drawer and stands up. Under the falls <br />of hair her face has become quiet and downcast, <br />as if she will be, all day among strangers, <br />looking down inside herself at our rapture.<br /><br />Galway Kinnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rapture-27/
