ungloved

Last night I woke up from a drowse with the perfect word. My notebook wasn't handy. I again thought I should paint a blackboard on the wall by my bed. I slurred to James: write me an e-mail. Okay -- what? Just say "ungloved."

One of the first poems I wrote for Ghost Maps was "She Comes to Meet Him" -- a good poem with one slightly off word in it: the "untouched" in "takes my untouched hand."

Here's the new version:

She comes to meet him
Omaha, Nebraska -- April 1996

Most of a leg left on a hospital ship --
the rock, the reek of ether.
He learned to walk, after,
but now he's going back
to bone, listing
into old damage.
We meet in the parlour.
He sits and sets his cane to picket
beside him, takes
my ungloved hand.
The young researcher, he says --
a charity. It might be
the young lady, in a yellow dress,
a perfume called Forest Lily,
as if it were a different April
and I had come to see him
carried from the train.
                              Outside,
on Farnam Street, the tulips blown,
the rain.

I'm so excited!

No, really.

"Ungloved" and "peach" are the best two moments of my week.