Poem for Thursday

San Sepolcro
By Jorie Graham

In this blue light
     I can take you there,
snow having made me
     a world of bone
seen through to. This
     is my house,

my section of Etruscan
     wall, my neighbor's
lemontrees, and, just below
     the lower church,
the airplane factory.
     A rooster

crows all day from mist
     outside the walls.
There's milk on the air,
     ice on the oily
lemonskins. How clean
     the mind is,

holy grave. It is this girl
     by Piero
della Francesca, unbuttoning
     her blue dress,
her mantle of weather,
     to go into

labor. Come, we can go in.
     It is before
the birth of god. No one
     has risen yet
to the museums, to the assembly
     line--bodies

and wings--to the open air
     market. This is
what the living do: go in.
     It's a long way.
And the dress keeps opening
     from eternity

to privacy, quickening.
     Inside, at the heart,
is tragedy, the present moment
     forever stillborn,
but going in, each breath
     is a button

coming undone, something terribly
     nimble-fingered
finding all of the stops.

--------

Am having very bad day laptop hardware-wise and have a potluck at one of the kids' schools tonight so am out of commission for posting anything entertaining. , sorry I missed you -- have been on the phone with Dell all morning! Next week? *smooch*

I have won from Entertainment Weekly a pass to the DC premiere of Nine Innings From Ground Zero: The 2001 World Series, and I can't go because it's being screened on Wednesday, September 8th, when my kids' back-to-school night is being held. I am very frustrated, as this is the HBO-produced film about baseball after 9/11 that's supposed to be very good. If anyone in the DC area who can get to Mazza Gallerie by 6:30 p.m. on that night wants the pass -- it's for two people -- leave me a message here and e-mail me your mailing address, and it's yours.