A Quiet Life

          The simple elegance of it.

          Does Robert Hass live it?

          I think not but could be wrong.

          His black and white eyes

          on the back of the book

          reflect twin Chinese junks

          drifting into golden ripples

          at sunset.  I was to have met

          him once but didn’t.  Instead

          I stayed in the old monastery

          where he would have stayed,

          perhaps in the very room.

          The grotesque Purépechan masks

          glared from the white of patio walls.

          Esperanza had silver moon steps,

          flat despair on her stitched-together

          face, a soft voice to tell

          of the accident, deft hands.

          She could not read the note I left her.

          Her fresh spinach soup was

          of the world’s greenest green.

          Today the brittle interlace

          of the old elm’s branches

          barely stirs against cloudless blue.

          The refrigerator is old, too, and hums.

— Carol Hamilton