Old Habits
Open the traveling suitcase—
There the beloved red sweater,
bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.
Each confirming: I chose these, I.
But habit is different: it chooses.
And we, its good horse,
opening our mouths at the sight of the bit.
Habit
Jane Hirshfield
I’d guess maybe it’s too soon
to tell, though the both of those
elusive as ghosts floating over
the old or absent or freshly made
cemetery stones: the guessing
and the telling: I don’t know which
elbow to lean on the most and
you don’t either but maybe it’s enough
to have elbows in the first place
(like it is some kind
of race and we make our way
plain every time, and every time
a winner.) Or knees to pray on. Or even
feet. Because see, so many
don’t and where are they then?
I get up intending and sit
down with it like it’s an old friend
and it nods its own
nod to me and makes me
take a chance with (for the last
few weeks or days anyway)
an Andrew or a Carson or
a Jane) to braid these three
who say the same things
differently about loneliness
about need about hands
turned up to the sky, all the while
oblivious to who sits on the meatiest
part reclining and who
(because I’m just home from
four weeks away and taking out
the clothes that make me daily
invisible) dangles from
the second knuckle on the ring
finger, who’s letting go without
my knowing, or, if with it,
without my explicit permission.
Riddance I say. Not good. Just
Riddance. Giddy, briefly,
with weightlessness—like the newly
dead must be, clutching the cliff
of the warm but immediately going cool
body against the random hand
brushing the eyes closed because
that’s what’s done
in the movies, closing, being composed,
when coming apart
is the same color as the shirt
I’m wearing and the only way
to see it is switching, is trading
what’s invisible for what’s brilliant,
as if there’s no middle ground
and never will be, not in a million
trillion years.
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