Last Lesson

A poem. "What was I waiting for?"

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Again for Robert Siegel

At large in the manicured dilapidation
Of Ogunquit, Maine: the brassy aegis
Of antiques, sharp mist of a squeezed lemon
Over Wellfleets, the old books’ coppering fringes.

It was another chance I let slip by
With that eternal reflex of self-defeat:
You’d worked your deep-set, practiced eye
Through my manuscript, proffering neater

Turns of phrase and gentle overhauls.
I could hear your firm benevolence
Over the phone, at your desk in overalls,
While I wore against the wave-lapped cadences

Of the Marginal Way, reluctant, closed.
What was I waiting for? The birth of Venus?
Some Botticellian advent of the muse?
I felt a short-lived tide withdraw between us

That reached its last ebb later, down in Boston,
In the satin shuffle of the Opera House,
When I called for a letter of recommendation
And heard the bitter salt in your wife’s voice.

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