More from Ocho #11
WHITE SESTINA
Again, they’ve tricked me out of bed
with the rumor of sight. No casual joke.
It seems they didn’t know what they were doing,
as if this dawn of rose and of white
were the gist of some other problem they were working
on. I am up now, and seething
with expectation. How I am seething
that the vision filtered through, and on my bed
stood, for a sweet second, the pilot working
its craft down to its pad, like a joke
which promised to be innocently white
discovered, in the end, to be something doing—
and though I wish I were doing
pet tricks, like a hound who can’t stop seething,
espying through the brush notes of white
(a brand new car, or pillow for its bed)
I am rarely ever in on it, when the joke
escapes into the higher lights, like a clock never working.
But I am working. I am working,
listening to what the repair man’s doing
to the faucet upstairs, and when a joke
falls from his lips, like a bubble from a trepanned seething,
I recoil like a child in its bed
taking notes, but protecting its fairly white
neck, wanting to keep it white. White,
the clouds want to show they’re working,
but I take it they need not lift my bed
to rise to the stars, to explain what they’re doing
so many weeks on the ground, the forum seething
with suspicion, that the mission be some sort of joke—
and, someday, we will just joke
about it, Aeneas. But say this to him, white
is the cloud, like a bang, and the working
a fairer standard to satisfy the seething.
Sure, it is clear there is something doing.
So lie down here, next to me, in my bed.
For the bed is the joke
doing lines before the judges, who are white
with pride and indignation: seething, working—
© Brian Kim Stefans 2007
Again, they’ve tricked me out of bed
with the rumor of sight. No casual joke.
It seems they didn’t know what they were doing,
as if this dawn of rose and of white
were the gist of some other problem they were working
on. I am up now, and seething
with expectation. How I am seething
that the vision filtered through, and on my bed
stood, for a sweet second, the pilot working
its craft down to its pad, like a joke
which promised to be innocently white
discovered, in the end, to be something doing—
and though I wish I were doing
pet tricks, like a hound who can’t stop seething,
espying through the brush notes of white
(a brand new car, or pillow for its bed)
I am rarely ever in on it, when the joke
escapes into the higher lights, like a clock never working.
But I am working. I am working,
listening to what the repair man’s doing
to the faucet upstairs, and when a joke
falls from his lips, like a bubble from a trepanned seething,
I recoil like a child in its bed
taking notes, but protecting its fairly white
neck, wanting to keep it white. White,
the clouds want to show they’re working,
but I take it they need not lift my bed
to rise to the stars, to explain what they’re doing
so many weeks on the ground, the forum seething
with suspicion, that the mission be some sort of joke—
and, someday, we will just joke
about it, Aeneas. But say this to him, white
is the cloud, like a bang, and the working
a fairer standard to satisfy the seething.
Sure, it is clear there is something doing.
So lie down here, next to me, in my bed.
For the bed is the joke
doing lines before the judges, who are white
with pride and indignation: seething, working—
© Brian Kim Stefans 2007
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