Edward Hopper "Early Sunday Morning" 1930

The street is still dozing, wrapped in its
mystery, like a sleeper lingering in his last
dream before waking, cocooned in comfortable
half-consciousness. It is so pristine
the dream could be of quietly grazing wild
horses in an alpine meadow in the High
Sierras—the sleeper’s dreamed eyes glimmering open
to their hooves, amidst the flare of paintbrush
and fireweed, as he lies in the golden
dust, the cool grasses, rapt
in his sleeping bag.

Hushed shadow swathes facade
and sidewalk. The windows wear their
dark recesses with such affecting
acceptance. The names of the stores
blear into brushstrokes, demanding
nothing.

I remember a street like
that near the Willis Avenue Bridge,
glimpsed from the car window as we fled
Manhattan on a hot May morning—
a low street dwarfed by
monoliths, seeming cool and self-possessed
as an oasis.

Soon, perhaps, if a lone walker
passes, the barber’s pole
will twirl a little, as if
its ribbons were held by dancers.

But not yet, not for a while.
Now the awnings and shades are the lowered
eyelids of horses, the storefronts
long stopped swaying, dreamily
graze. 

And another one (as if
the first): reverently, on my hand—
papa the courtier—your walrus
moustache splotchily wet. And
an encore: you miss
my hand in your hand and 
kiss your own.
		
At your luncheon table
in the dementia wing, you've clasped
both my hands like prayer
times two above the soup.
Looks like broccoli-cheese, something
inedible. On our right,
a glowering resident twists away
from the looming spoon. Again you touch
			
my hand to your lips, then deposit 
another wet word juicily
on my cheek—not quite missing
my ear—as if to speak
my nickname, katshkele. The papery 
dowager on our left tremors down 
her spoon and stares: envy? desire?
disgust? 
			
I force-feed you smiles and you 
smile back, electric,
and kiss me on the forehead,
pinning there a blue
ribbon for some virtue I've
hardly shown—staying but
planning escape.
		 
I stroke your dry, bald head. 
It’s almost as if 
you've grown fur, like the ancient
dog at home—out of his own small
skull, arthritic, shambling
along, stumbling, dropping his 
back end, barking let me in!
barking let me out!

I almost wish you were furred.
So easy, so soothing, for me
to stroke your head again.

Home from traveling half
the dizzy globe, harbored
in my own bed, I startle out of a dream
of spinning around my young mother
as she hangs laundry
on the tar-sticky roof of our Bronx
building. The wind-tossed 
sun’s so real, the smell
of All-clean shadowy damp 
still slaps against my nose, 
and the back of my neck feels warm
from flying inside cool tunnels 
of white sheets, and back through
empty clothesline rows—
as if speeding along the Ligurian
coast, galleria, viadotto, galleria,
viadotto, while she yells,
“Wild child!”

They say our memories are memories
of memories. Memory's yellow post-it
had to have flagged the original
event streaming full-sail
away—my dream's a snapshot 
of a snapshot. Yet it so closely
hovers, I search my linen closet, 
for a worn percale pillowcase  
I thought I’d saved: to sniff
the buried smells of soap 
and sun and wind,  underlaid with hints 
of her own closet's tarpaper
and camphor, where it once steeped.

But I’ve thrown it out, in a moment 
of Spartan excess, just as I disassembled
her candy-tin sewing box, with its ancient packs 
of needles, glue sticks
for stocking runs, girdle garters, 
bra elastic, hooks and eyes, 
its deep smell of dust and stale 
sachet… all dissipated... 
as long ago her household
with its rules and customs
once eternal as the pillars
of Luxor... 

For a few seconds still enshrouded
in the dream, I bloom in her ardent
sun, pull down wind-fresh line-stiff 
undershirts she squared straighter 
than any back, hold 
the sheets as big as sails 
and help her fold and fold
and fold them to the compass 
of her closet shelf—

white sails filling, silk flags
rippling in the wind 
of my memory of a memory 
of a memory.