Seven o’clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table
than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable
realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and foxes and the general hubbub
of inkies and jennets and Kickapoos with their lemniscs
or peekaboo-quiffs of Russian sable
and tallow-unctuous vernix, into the realm of the widgeon-
the ‘whew’ or ‘yellow-poll’, not the ‘zuizin’-
Dorothy Aoife Korelitz Muldoon: I watch through floods of tears
as they give her a quick rub-a-dub
and whisk
her off to the nursery, then check their staple-guns for staples
(Paul Muldoon)
More Poetry from Paul Muldoon:
- Milkweed and Monarch (Paul Muldoon Poems)
- Gathering Mushrooms (Paul Muldoon Poems)
- Extraordinary Rendition (Paul Muldoon Poems)
- A Dent (Paul Muldoon Poems)
- Hedgehog (Paul Muldoon Poems)
- Why Brownlee Left (Paul Muldoon Poems)