Spent (Mark Doty)

Spent

by Mark Doty  

 

Late August morning I go out to cut

spent and faded hydrangeas--washed 

greens, russets, troubled little auras 

of sky as if these were the very silks 

of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin

then half-restored, after all this time...

When I come back with my handful 

I realize I've accidentally locked the door,

and can't get back into the house.

The dining room window's easiest;

crawl through beauty bush and spirea, 

push aside some errant maples, take down 

the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up. 

But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill 

and the radiator down to the tile?

I try bending one leg in, but I don't fold 

readily; I push myself up so that my waist 

rests against the sill, and lean forward, 

place my hands on the floor and begin to slide 

down into the room, which makes me think 

this was what it was like to be born: 

awkward, too big for the passageway...

Negotiate, submit? 

                          When I give myself

to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,

the dazzling splotchy flowerheads

scattered around me on the floor.

Will leaving the world be the same

--uncertainty as to how to proceed, 

some discomfort, and suddenly you're 

--where? I am so involved with this idea 

I forget to unlock the door, 

so when I go to fetch the mail, I'm locked out 

again. Am I at home in this house, 

would I prefer to be out here, 

where I could be almost anyone? 

This time it's simpler: the window-frame, 

the radiator, my descent. Born twice 

in one day! 

                In their silvered jug,

these bruise-blessed flowers: 

how hard I had to work to bring them 

into this room. When I say spent, 

I don't mean they have no further coin.

If there are lives to come, I think

they might be a littler easier than this one