lather

lather

The shooting stars in your black hair

in bright formation

are flocking where,

so straight, so soon?

                                    from “The Shampoo”

                                    Elizabeth Bishop

I’ve forgotten the name of your lover—

for nearly twenty years it was same

soap same tea same face cream—

Who forgets a name that needs a name

forgotten?

Weary one in the crowd, when the lights

dim and the podium glows and coats

your stone sober glass a dusked gray

they don’t know it’s you I've waited

for.

It’s you who works the pressure valves, ex-

pert anesthesiologist—the glove comes

over the mouth and knows all of us

and  you open your book, look out into

the hush

and begin in the sweaty bed of Her,

no not there, no, not there, but shampoo—

the drizzle then the foam, the swan neck

rinse so far back the bobbing esophagus is a fish

nipping

nipping then altogether gone.  Like a bubble

or a fist of suds.  Or a dark

room and a hand on a hand and on and on

the pause of the water, the first bird-word its grass

basket

of sorts before they all, (but one first, there’s

always a first one) flush up and then fury

and blur.  They are ducks or they are grouse

or they are hands, first against the rigid edge

and then

later, report report my near deaf ear hearing

something fall, something far far away fall

fast as impracticable wings after the shock of small

stones, the way a breast opens for them, opens
like I did, lover.