Shadow Map for Stanley Kunitz
The irises in the early patch of sun
unfurl their gentian silks — a phrase I worry
you’d disallow, who coaxed a thousand
thousand rhizomes into flower. The bed
that winds along the walk is only green,
the tall, top-heavy stalks held back a day
or so by the dogwood’s frothy shade. You told
my ex your terraced garden on the Cape
began to bloom the week you drove up
from the city, flower following flower and fern
like cards turned over in a winning hand
through summer and beyond, when ocean fog
blurred even the foxglove’s carillon. You must
have learned every square foot of light
and shadow, how far the sun would reach in May,
how far it would fall short by October.
How far I’d fallen short that final time
we met. I was becoming one of those
hungry ghosts who labor in the subbasement
of language, deleting commas, adding itals —
who share the storeroom offices that hive
the city with reams of printer paper, empty
coffee cups. I could feel my body growing
more porous. On the F train I glanced
at the dark window, surprised I had
a reflection. I’ve raked and sifted decades,
hoping for a glint, a sudden tessera,
a new detail from our last talk. I don’t
know what I said. I know what I was saying:
“More praise. More praise. Praise enough, my only
good father, to lift my poems and me beyond
our dirty-dank, dese-and-dose roots.” By way
of answer, when it came, you quoted yourself,
Live in the layers, not on the litter.
A beat. And then as coda, “After all
these years I finally know what I meant.”
After all these years, Stanley, so do I.