The Last Day

At year's end, the garden bare, whatever
lives there locked in the grip of zero, blessed be
habits that keep you warm through iron weather:

Light-led motion from sleep to stove to larder,
clink of dishes, clatter of spoons and forks
arranging themselves like words into ritual order;

Clear pour of water under clotted stems
and swollen arthritic joints of old begonias;
Dusting and sweeping out of rooms;

Froth of soiled wash in baptismal suds
and brisk embrace that leaves it fresh and folded;
The stroll between canyons of canned goods,

choosing simple quarry you hunt by proxy,
hiss and slap of mail through the brass lip
of solitude, inviting life in, (but slowly

not too close, or the trapper's scented
lure will draw you out into danger,
into some false thaw, the cry of the hunted);

By night, the slink into sleep again, turning
in that wound-licking posture flesh remembers,
wanting nothing to come but one more morning.

--Rhina P. Espaillat (1932- ), Dominican-American poet