She knew he was writing a poem
because everything in the room
was slowly sifting away:
her dustpan the color of buttercups,
her eyeglasses and her sink
and her five masks praising the sun.
That night she saw him ascend.
He floated above their bed,
he gathered the dark strands
of the poem like a tide.
On his nose her glasses polished
themselves to crystals. On his back
the dustpan fanned out
like a saffron cape.
Now he was turning his face toward the sun
and riding her simple sink into heaven.
In the morning she calls to the newsboy:
“How can I, wife of the poet,
know what he saw and did there?
It is enough that I open my eyes
and my glasses perch on my nose
and show me the brittle dreams of parrots.
Enough that my dustpan believes it shoulders
the broken bones of those warriors the stars,
that my sink gurgles for joy,
and my five masks tell me more
than I knew when I made them.”