you say you’ve moved to a place with a view
and that it’s changed everything
now you won’t be back to your rooms on the third floor
where we watched the moon rise over the neighbor’s
+++ slate roof, and shamrocks in coffee tins
+++ strained for the afternoon sun in your kitchen..

and there are windows on the east and south, you say,
the lake’s the color of the sky, some days one blue
slips all the way from heaven
down to the dirty, dirty shores of Lake Michigan
+++ at night, there’s no telling ships from stars
+++ in that deep black, and last week a wind charged
+++ cold off the lake, pigeons froze to the walks
+++ you counted four of them just on your block..

you say you’ve moved to a place with a view
and that it’s changed everything
though I never held still for your caresses
I must admit that your talk makes me jealous
+++ the way you speak of the lake like a love
+++ refuse to hang drapes, and the way you scrub
+++ those panes till they vanish into the view
+++ and lake and sky, and lake and sky,
+++ and lake and sky embrace you…

Lyric based on “The View” from Julia Kasdorf’s Sleeping Preacher,
published by University of Pittsburgh Press, ©1992, all rights reserved.
Reproduced by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.