|
|
 |
The Talkers
All week, we talked. We talked
in the morning on the porch, when I combed my hair
and flung the comb-hair out into the air,
it floated down the slope, toward the valley,
we talked while walking to the car, talked
over its mild, curved roof,
while opening the doors, then ducked down
and there we were, bent toward the interior, talking.
Meeting in the middle of the day,
the first thing when we saw each other
we opened our mouths. All day,
we sang to each other the level music
of spoken language. Even while we ate
we did not pause, I'd speak to him through
the broken body of the butter cookie,
gently spraying him with crumbs. We talked
and walked, we leaned against the car and talked
in the parking lot, until everyone else
had driven off, we clung to its dark
cold raft and started a new subject.
We did not talk about his wife, much,
or my husband, but to everything else
we turned the working of our lips and tongues
— up to our necks in the hot tub, or
walking up the steep road,
stepping into the hot dust as if
down into the ions of a wing, and on the
sand, next to each other, as we turned
the turns that upon each other would be the
turnings of love — even under
water there trailed from our mouths the delicate
chains of our sentences. But mostly at night, and
far into the night, we talked until we
dropped, as if, stopping for an instant, we might
move right toward each other. Today,
he said he felt he could talk to me forever,
it must be the way the angels live,
sitting across from each other, deep
in the bliss of their shared spirit. My God,
they are not going to touch each other.
"The Talkers" will appear in Sharon Olds' forthcoming book Blood, Tin, Straw
|
©1999 Sharon Olds and Nerve.com
|
|
|
