Thursday, August 25, 2011

This Week's Poem in the Series About the Autumn of 2005


October 4, 2005
Went out to dinner with Jen and Kristen last night

To a restaurant full of pumpkins and sunflowers
where a friendly young woman sommelier picked out our wine
I want to describe what this white wine tasted like
but I don’t want to sound like a ponce
Here goes
Mild and rich and mellow
a flatness to the flavor which was almost metallic
but in a warm way
copper as opposed to stainless steel
and a flavor of unsweet fruit
toasted figs or raisins or unripe pear
And in place of that standard butter flavor was
Cream? Grass? Sunshine?
Damn it’s hard to articulate taste
But hey
I can tell you
in the ladies room
there was a photo of Sophia Loren cooking spaghetti

This morning on my walk to work
there was the cat among the pumpkins
Lately the guy at the bodega nextdoor
wheels this cart out onto the sidewalk each morning
and on the cart is a bale of hay
and on top of the hay are some pumpkins for sale
and sitting in among the pumpkins the past few mornings has been this cat
a small brown tortoiseshell type cat who lives in the store
doing his imitation of an autumnal picture postcard

The morning light has changed from last week to this
as late as a quarter to eight on my way to work now
it’s darker in the canyons between the buildings
and the brightness at their tops is
golden and honeyed
rather than
white and bright
now the sun is shining up onto their top halves
from somewhere down near the horizon
rather than down upon them from high up in the sky

And it’s dark as night out in the street now
when we sit and have our breakfast at six thirty
at the table near the window
the lights shine out from the coffee shop across the way
and the sky gets incrementally brighter as we eat
There’s so much that’s nice about it really
but we’re always so tired and I'm always sort of miserable so early
But the sitting across from each other is good
and the spoons and bowls and napkins
The jelly jar of sugar on the table when we have cold cereal
The flowered tablecloth

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