Lynn Emmanuel

Ordinary Objects

"Hie et ubique?"
Hamlet to the ghost

I am letting them stand
For everything I love

The light's unsteady scale
Acrosee the glass, the hard

Brown grit of ants among the roses.
The bittersweet--

Everywhere I look I will see
Italy. The flowers will be full

Of prisons and churches,
Of women in black dresses. full

Of motorcycles and geuflecting.
The nightshade's dark, crooked stem

Is your street
And the water in the vase the sea's

Horizon tilting with the tilt
Of your ship. I am going to let

The daffodil be your mistress.
She is tired of you and stands

Looking at her feet.
In the fan's slow wind

The curtains reach for you.
I am full of grief. I am going

To lie down and die and be reborn
To come back as these roses

And wind myself thorn by
Thron around your house

To fit into the nutshell
And the flat seed, the sear.

The door, the road, the web,
The moon's bald envious eye

Staring at you through the drapes.