At night, I long to recline
like Sarah Bernhardt
in the shape of a coffin,
the way I imagine
after a magnificent performance
of Hamlet, she climbed
into the significance of roses,
then lay down exhausted
in her silk-lined bed.
Each elusive moment liquefying
into one last murmuring spoonful,
the whole world dissolving—
even taxes, their slender ledger lines
collapsing.
Every furious space patiently filled:
no room left for Wonder,
or Worry. No room
to ponder prevention, or intervention.
Religion. Children.
Just the narrow
unknowing
filling, and filling
with a single white blossom.