Rob Taylor: Two Poems

Naked

Evening circles sunlight from the sky,

mirrors my window, one way. Outside

I must be museumed, diorama’d, aglow.

I turn to see who’s watching, find

the one man I’d forgotten to expect,

and behind him, through him,

blurred into his face and eyes, a wall

of books I read once, shelved, walk by

occasionally, fingering their spines.

My wife steps from the shower, dries

and wanders by. I comment on the blinds.

Who cares? she sighs. And suddenly I see

what I’ve been doing this whole time.

A Jack Gilbert Poem

Gianna is like Linda is like

Michiko. They are dead, or will be,

and what’s the difference, really?

But there is a pleasure in them,

and a pleasure inside that pleasure.

And a pleasure inside the memory

of those pleasures. It is like the old

Greek woman carrying firewood

up the hill outside my window

who knows, despite it all,

that spring is coming.

It is also like Pittsburgh.

Rob Taylor is the author of the poetry collection The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011). He lives with his wife, Marta, in Vancouver, where he is the Poetry Editor at PRISM international and a coordinator of the Dead Poets Reading Series.