Channel 2 News Poem by Bernard Henrie

To sit over dinner, a light smell
of rock fish, overture of sweet
corn; last supper I say, refilling
the wine glass, but not funny
for you, your in-door sky over
your head like a blue nightcap,
nails into your scuffed clouds
like nails into a white hand.

The grammar she uses is slow
motion like spreading olive oil.
An hour to read the newspaper
like a visitor at the Washington
Zoo, looking at each dank cage
or a Frisco seal asleep on rocks;
golden foot dangling a shoe,
stopping, stooping to strap on
a sandal. Writing a poem, her
housecoat blows half-open, news
with a bruised interior shuts off.

Burned animals, mouths open
in black lava like drinking birds;
The volcano resting in a wreath
of sulphur fumes, profuse air
teetering on the windows to land
in streaks of anonymous ash;
I do not expect to see over smoke,
beyond deeper shallows and flats
swept by androgynous plumes,
newspapers say cyclones strike
church roofs; terrible gods far
away unable to hear us.

There is an evening on channel
water like a swan or water bird,
spread across canal water beside
a slag barge, brick loaded, rusted,
oiled; from a canal observation
bench, a sunburned expatriate
landlocked from wastes dropped
stuttering into my newspaper.

A stand of dusty sycamore, alter
light, iron arch; peeling railway
bridge, weathered paint, cables;
lucid surfaces crusted, resolved in
the chestnut burr; Times Book
Review over a wrinkled bacon
breakfast; we talk, open a vein
into a silver bowl of paraffin fruit.