Tuesday. The word sounds as far away
as Florence. The backside of the moon
is closer than tuesday!
Tell me the winds, like a bagpipe skirling,
hail from a duchy
fabulous as tuesday.
The hot-blooded sun, now flitting
down my neck, now filling my room
with its gold soliloquy,
couldn’t burn from a place
more remote than tuesday.
My heart spends what it can least afford,
a hundred times a day
climbs aboard a jitney
bound for tuesday; how shall I bear
its sweet treachery till tuesday?
I’ll work, I’ll tidy, I’ll garden,
I’ll do. I’ll browse through scores
weighty as linen, but tuesday,
tuesday dear as a pardon,
tuesday as unlikely as the Serengeti,
tuesday, when you arch above me
like a melody,
when you sail through my limbs
on a breeze fresh as a colt,
tuesday will harvest my mood,
my thought, tuesday rustle my whims,
tuesday grow in my life
like a weed.
A shadow, oblique, in a dream is tuesday!
Only a China clipper, swayed off course,
a tunic of kelp choking its bow,
might chance on an island
extravagant as tuesday.
Nut-sweet as tuesday. Lush and willowy
and green as tuesday. Come, swear to me
that in your blithe pursuance
of theater, soirées, and ortolans,
you won’t know a savory breath
till tuesday!