for LRS (as always)

If I wake before you at the first signs of morning
when the sun comes through the window
and gives everything a transparent look as its light
bursts through the dust and diffuses around
the dresser, the lamp, reflects off the brass bed frame;
if for once I make the kitchen with my toes intact
and put on coffee, pour a cup, over-sweet but strong;
if I sit and read in the morning light as the big cat yawns
and pads across the room, also waking before you,
looking tired and worn from dreams to be envied,
looking plump and soft like an arctic seal; if it is spring, and feels
it and sounds it with the songs of spring birds whose names I’ve 
             never known,
other than robin and swallow, because I’m not from this part of 
             the country
we have chased each other across to be in the same place together
so far from the together with which we started and to which our 
             every day
inclines, and because I don’t really give a damn what birds are 
             called,
though I love to watch them, love to listen to them making spring
noises outside the window (which have an entirely different 
             meaning
to them than they do to me, of that I’m sure); if I get hungry,
and if, this being spring after all, the air raises little bumps
along my bare arms, because despite the sun and my feeling
you should be awake by now, it’s still early and still cool
when I get berries and melon and fresh French bread
from the little shops along St. Clair which always remind
me how far we are from home, home having nothing like
corner fruit markets and ubiquitous bakery smells
as far as I remember after what has stretched to years;
if, returning, I make French toast with fresh fruit
trying to tempt you awake; if you wake, face in your pillow,
with a little noise full of the same happy reluctance
a child expresses when told it’s time to leave the pool
and go for ice cream, turning over all green eyes
and pillow lines, rising to the source of the smell
coming off the plate in my hand, slowly working up
one of your dozen different and distinct smiles that are so you
you should hold patent and on another would speak of possible
mental instabilities, as though facial expressions
over a period of years had come to correspond to something 
             deeper
than mere moods, to reflect a mental tectonics where the 
             grinding
of one plate across another produced a fissure called a smile
but which on you are kaleidoscope filters, different
windows on the pattern, different reasons to travel
across a country (though they have an entirely different meaning
to the birds outside, I’m sure); if we sit and eat, as usual, in 
             silence
in a room full of morning sun and brass and an unpleasant
apple green and purple dresser which has lost its whimsy,
then doze with the little cat chasing dust motes in the sun
balanced on her hind legs on my hip and the fat cat
flat on her back at the foot of the bed, while the coffee burns
down to bitter sludge and the left-over batter congeals,
while another day ticks by methodically, unaware
that we’re in the next room, together, full of coffee and French 
             toast;
then this is Saturday.

Then Sunday.

by Chris Jennings
from: Vacancies, ©2003