Departure By Taxi

"Sometimes you need to go looking for trouble before it comes looking for you,"
I say as you drive, the freeway spinning out ahead smooth as linen
In a good hotel room where they sprinkle the bedclothing with lavender water
So the pillow beneath your head is grandmother's gloved hand
Giving you that much home to anchor onto in the night
When you hang idle between two worlds like a new ghost awkward in managing his sheet.

You don't reply. I'm not going to throw more words, sheet upon sheet
Of newspaper collecting around your ankles, impeding you --
The news of the day bleached meaningless by night.
It's an hour since you and the cat rained silent reproach as I climbed into pre-crumpled travel linen
Judged the balance of bags, felt the fit of luggage to hand
Emptied a pitcher onto the Richlieu gallicas sighing over the balcony railing, divas whose only aria is water, water, more water.

In the Koran, you tell me, a man was condemned to hell for not bringing a cat water.
This is supposed to reassure me, ranged against your rap sheet -
Last departure, the ivy longer than my hair, stone dead at your hand.
Ten years of care wiped out in six weeks of thirst, you
Thirsting for me but sealing yourself tight as the drawer that inters the silver and best linen
Both of you, man and ivy, straining for the sound of my wet step in the street at night.

You've learned something since then about the thirst at night
Been given everything but water, water, more water.
As flax flayed and beaten, at close of day lays its bruised pulp down and consents to become linen
Wrought so carefully fine we never feel its submission, but find only joy wrapped in the sheet
And cloak our delights in vegetable sorrow, you
Offer me caresses whose skill is pain, familiar wounds on your hand

I know... well, like the back of my hand.
I'll think of it far away this night
When I'm delivered to my destination by a cabbie who isn't you
Bathe off grit and oil with foreign water
Slide myself into bed like a letter, one close-written sheet,
Tucked into a crisp envelope of linen.

It's a nice embrace, anonymous and cool, these arms of linen.
The strange bedclothes outline my body like a hand
Wiping clean troublous thoughts so thoroughly, it might be my winding sheet
And I lying with coins on my eyes in the silence of my last night
Waiting to be carried across a strip of silver water
To a new place, by a ferryman who isn't you.

Envoi
When it comes time for you to lie down in an hour that marks my day and your night
Remember it's only air and water that separates us, only air and water.