FIVE POEMS
On Becoming The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforting lists that make you believe you havefinally created time, wide open spaces of emptiness, you are free to use or not use;but you keep looking at that gap, keep peering in, trying to see what is there,and occasionally you get up and touch it, as if you might feel it, what is there.I am being coy. I am not talking about you, but me. And it is not a door,but a painting of a naked woman sitting like a pear on a perch, her knees drawn upto her chest, her head buried between her knees, her…