The river in front almost black,
blue further along, true blue one can never
walk to, then white where I can barely
see, it escapes into ideas of Heaven.
What work has been done,
with both hands, pleasure and pain, but real
is the pain, and kept, book of days,
with pleasure an ephemeral sigh.
Jealousy of what celebrates itself
immense, the thingness of the orange peels
that are everywhere, I can clean toilets,
a woman, passing, says.
I like the modest mosses, expressive
between stones, their tender soothings,
while a bruise-coloured pigeon pillows into
sleep atop its own bosom.
Paula Bohince is the author of The Children (2012) and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have appeared widely in publications, including the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker and Poetry magazine. She received the 2013 George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and has taught at New York University.
