WILLIAM SNYDER

The Easiness of Pleasure      

                                                               

In July, dawn brightened early, soon
after five, but now, late September,
the equinox come and gone, it's six,
six-thirty, and still dark. So with breakfast
done, and at the kitchen sink
with the one south window, I rinse
the cereal bowl, the coffee cup, dump
the grinds, pour hot milk into a thermos,
watch the brightening day—the sun, finally,
somewhere over Nova Scotia or Maine,
maybe Saint Paul, but huffing it toenail-
to-fingertip up the planet's curve. 

Now the faintest, whitest blue, and when
I turn off the light, little, narrow
strips of pink—clouds, or jets, but beautiful
as they hang there. The crab tree limbs
too, still green, and in the flower patch
I hoed from the lawn—some phlox remain,
magenta petaled, a miracle, what with
the weekend's heavy rain. And those wide,
thick, dark red flower things that butterflies
seem to love, and bees, still there too. 

Sometimes pleasures come easy, like
this kitchen morning. But the complex
too—like that stray word, promiscuous,
I stumbled on searching color words
for phlox. Or laughter at the UN
at an important someone's expense.
Or reading student poems—their lives
bared large on workshop pages. I hope,
for me, bitterness won't set in, ever,
and fester, hard to heal, like those
mouth things I get sometimes.
And cynicism, what with Washington,
age, my students' ignorance of the plural
of life. Lives, I tell them, lives. But still,
I like those wisps of pink up there,
all that laughter, those budding poems. 

 

 

 

 

                                                                          

Mulberrylullberrynullberry                             

       After The Mulberry Tree
       Vincent Van Gogh
       October 1889 

I would like to sit this morning
on this hillside. Rest beneath this tree.
Mulberry. October orange,
October yellow. Drink tea
from a bottle. Eat a chunk of gouda,
a fine big heel of bread, a bit
of butter, soft and sharp. I want to
think about bark and cheese.
And berries. Mulberries. Mull.
Mulberry. To mull. 

He's mulled it, he said.
This mulberry tree. He pointed to it
yesterday as we walked from
the Terrace—the sun then,
a deep crimson culling clouds
to the west. Cull. Mull. He'd been
thinking it over, he said. What he
could do with that tree, those
leaves, that hill, the tall,
pale grass, the darkest moment
of the rich, dark sky behind it.
He'll be here soon, this morning,
walking with his box
and stretcherwood, canvas tacked
and stiff and clean and ready
for paint. My morning
will be ruined—my own 

contemplative hillside, my cheesy
lunch. My tea gone cold. Lost.
Null. He's mulled over leaves
that will soon be falling, yellows
and oranges dulling down. Mulberries,
brainy clumps of blueyblack
dropped and dried and crushed
by clogs or stuck to leather soles.
Eaten by birds. Waxwings and jays. 

Some say autumn is dull. They'd prefer
spring. Not him. He'll paint this tree,
and I'll have to shift. No lulling around,
he'll say. How can I paint? he'll ask,
what with you up there eating beneath
the orange, the yellow, the bright,
the blue? So he's culled me, dulled me.
A nulberry morning, indeed.         

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