Open Shutters Read Online Free Page B

it tomorrow
    just as you left it (knock-knock of woodpecker
    keeping yesterday’s time, cicada’s buzz,
    the turning of another page, and somewhere
    a question raised and dropped, the pendulum-
    swing of a wind-chime). Back and forth, the rocker
    and the reading eye, and isn’t half
    your jittery, odd joy the looking out
    now and again across the road to where,
    under the lush allées of long-lived trees
    conferring shade and breeze on those who feel
    none of it, a hundred stories stand confined,
    each to their single page of stone? Not far,
    the distance between you and them: a breath,
    a heartbeat dropped, a word in your two-faced
    book that invites you to its party only
    to sadden you when it’s over. And so you stay
    on your teetering perch, you move and go nowhere,
    gazing past the heat-struck street that’s split
    down the middle—not to put too fine
    a point on it—by a double yellow line.

Snowbirds
    Profiles framed in the window’s
    glare of Florida sun,
    two friends, both snow-capped widows,
    are sharing a cinnamon bun.
    Are they economizing?
    Fearing their waists can afford
    just half of that white icing?
    Neither one says a word
    while they divide with a knife
    the whorling galaxy
    of their treat, like girls at tea,
    starting to play at life.
    Alike impeccable
    in Keds and peds and pleated
    tennis shorts, they’re seated
    at their accustomed table—
    or what feels customary
    now that they needn’t worry
    about filling another’s mouth;
    now that they don’t fly south
    anymore, or north, or provide
    eggs for anybody.
    And yet our cares die hard.
    One woman is still ready,
    unasked, not looking up,
    to pour a long white stream
    from a tiny pitcher of cream
    into the other’s cup.

Florida Fauna
1.
    Silently, the green
    long-tailed lizard glides across
    our floor like a queen.
2.
    Who was first to spear
    toothpicks through melon balls and
    diced alligator?
3.
    Ice cubes in a glass:
    outside, the chilling shake of
    rattlesnake through grass.

Discovery
                             6:48 a.m., and leaden
                   little jokes about what heroes
        we are for getting up at this hour.
    Quiet. The surf and sandpipers running.
        T minus ten and counting, the sun
                   mounting over Canaveral
        a swollen coral, a color
    bright as camera lights. We’re blind-
        sided by a flash:
                             shot from the unseen
                   launching pad, and so from nowhere,
        a flame-tipped arrow—no, an airborne
    pen on fire, its ink a plume
        of smoke which, even while zooming
                   upward, stays as oddly solid
        as the braided tail of a tornado,
    and lingers there as lightning would
        if it could steal its own thunder.
         —Which, when it rumbles in, leaves
        under or within it a million
        firecrackers going off, a thrill
    of distant pops and rips in delayed
        reaction, hitting the beach in fading
        waves as the last glint of shuttle
        receives our hands’ eye-shade salute:
    the giant point of all the fuss soon
        smaller than a star.
                             Only now does a steady, low
                   sputter above us, a lawn mower
        cutting a corner of the sky,
    grow audible. Look, it’s a biplane!—
        some pilot’s long-planned, funny tribute
                   to wonder’s always-dated orbit
        and the itch of afterthought. I swat
    my ankle, bitten by a sand gnat:
        what the locals call no-see-’ums.

Double Takes
THE DEBUTANTE
    Heads turn: in the taffeta rustle
    of leaves, clutching a dance-card
    acorn under her chin,
    a high-society squirrel
    curls her tail like a bustle.
NORWOTTUCK
    The leftward-peaking curve
    of the mountain just behind
    our house puts me in mind
    of a huge,