02-24-2016, 01:38 AM
I've been really getting into Stephen Dobyns lately.
Pastel Dresses by Stephen Dobyns
Like a dream, which when one
becomes conscious of it
becomes a confusion, so her name
slipped between the vacancies.
As little more than a child
I hurried among a phalanx
of rowdy boys across a dance floor—
such a clattering of black shoes.
Before us sat a row of girls
in pastel dresses waiting.
One sat to the right. I uttered
some clumsy groping of sounds.
She glanced up to where I stood
and the brightness of her eyes
made small explosions within me.
That’s all that’s left.
I imagine music, an evening,
a complete story, but truly
there is only her smile and my response—
warm fingerprints crowding my chest.
A single look like an inch of canvas
cut from a painting: the shy complicity,
the expectation of pleasure, the eager
pushing forward into the mystery.
Maybe I was fourteen. Pressed
to the windows, night bloomed
in the alleyways and our futures
rushed off like shafts of light.
My hand against the small of a back,
the feel of a dress, that touch
of starched fabric, its damp warmth—
was that her or some other girl?
Scattered fragments, scattered faces—
the way a breeze at morning
disperses mist across a pond,
so the letters of her name
return to the alphabet. Her eyes,
were they gray? How can we not love
this world for what it gives us? How
can we not hate it for what it takes away?
Pastel Dresses by Stephen Dobyns
Like a dream, which when one
becomes conscious of it
becomes a confusion, so her name
slipped between the vacancies.
As little more than a child
I hurried among a phalanx
of rowdy boys across a dance floor—
such a clattering of black shoes.
Before us sat a row of girls
in pastel dresses waiting.
One sat to the right. I uttered
some clumsy groping of sounds.
She glanced up to where I stood
and the brightness of her eyes
made small explosions within me.
That’s all that’s left.
I imagine music, an evening,
a complete story, but truly
there is only her smile and my response—
warm fingerprints crowding my chest.
A single look like an inch of canvas
cut from a painting: the shy complicity,
the expectation of pleasure, the eager
pushing forward into the mystery.
Maybe I was fourteen. Pressed
to the windows, night bloomed
in the alleyways and our futures
rushed off like shafts of light.
My hand against the small of a back,
the feel of a dress, that touch
of starched fabric, its damp warmth—
was that her or some other girl?
Scattered fragments, scattered faces—
the way a breeze at morning
disperses mist across a pond,
so the letters of her name
return to the alphabet. Her eyes,
were they gray? How can we not love
this world for what it gives us? How
can we not hate it for what it takes away?
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson