Public Republic

Roger Craik

Photo: Jaci Berkopec

On the day that all the world had died,
Standing on my front door step
With coffee in the dark blue mug I’d bought
In Hartford, at some wordy conference,
I idly pressed my bell

And caught
In that ding-dong hackneyed chime
The sound that suddenly meant you,
The one you must each time have faintly heard through wood
Before the hurtling urgency of me inside,
Summoned by banality that I
Alone can recognize
As blasphemously you, uniquely you, so
Freshly newly you each time, bringing your unmeasureable
Gift
Of yourself

Which has me capering
While in my living room my samovar
Waltzes my candlesticks dizzy,
And on the floor my Turkish carpet undulates
Like some exotic deep-sea ray.

And there I’d be,
In one great sweep all fingers fumbling off your wedding ring
And smoothing with my palms
Your long black coat away to hang it up among
The jingling uncooperative triangles of wire,
And kissing every nearest bit of you, no matter what,
And helter-skelter tumbling out
My questions, telling you
All the things that I presumed
Of interest in my dreary day

So far

Until you came
And pressed the bell
And made me happy

Then.

Alone, of course,
Again and again
I press my bell

And every time, although it’s not
— Although my reason tells me that it’s not –

It’s you, it’s you, it’s always always you.

Poem from the volume of poetry “Those Years“