Aubade

A new poem by Marc Di Saverio 

I wake to wha-cheers from her window-sill.

A breeze of flower-blends enters her room;
her upside-down blue roses do not sway.
The skyline seems like our conductor's wand;
her house of get-well cards still stands today.

Like wind shakes dew from a bowing petal
the real shakes my dream of being her groom.
Upon my sweat-beads flower-blends now settle
with the waning scent of her new perfume.

Arising I’m hearing her bath-water flow—
is this what Keats once felt for Fanny Brawne?—
Arising I open my eyes to the dawn:
why are my socks all wet and red and cold?

Like an old man’s map of the world I fold.

MARC DI SAVERIO's poems and translations have appeared in Hazlitt, Canadian Notes and Queries, Maisonneuve, and other magazines. He is the author of Sanatorium Songs (2013) and The Selected Poems of Emile Nelligan (forthcoming).
 

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