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Figure
It was finished by the end of the tennis match,
the early January Australian open, a week
after tv's national championship football,
a serious woman with parted lips, not angry
or pouty, done in red clay called sedona.
At first she had had breasts, a rough patch
above the eyes and a somewhat oblique
look to the torso and the smooth hairfall.
She had had no nipples, the breasts very
round, regular, smooth, et cetera.
I suppose she thought me a kind of loyal
companion, smiling at her, or at least
not desiring her to be different, accepting
all her errors, all the wrinkles and rough
spots in her face, almost like a lament.
When my mother saw her, she liked the tall
shoulders, the problems suggested by the creased
brow, the upper body only suggesting
a bosom and, I think, thought enough
of her own flat chest, her detachment.
What I do all night is, therefore, to keep
myself from remembering, from pain,
is to be aware, some night owl.
Sometimes my mother stays awake and reads,
waiting for the clay to stand up and move.
The losses that we know are remembered in sleep,
so we stay alert to changes in night rain,
moonlight, allnighters, cats on the prowl.
The red clay says I know what she needs:
sharpen the blank front and the face above.
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