The Grocer Is Singing Songs of Love
Listen: he has given up
counting his change, his potatoes.
He offers me a pot full of flowers,
throws his doors open
to the sunlight, the rain.
And I am thinking —
why not us too?
With us, the always same
fixed round of worries,
stations of the cross done
on our knees. You, the blind man
with the tin cup,
Me, the fish wife, whose fingers
scrape, scrape that old bone.
What a pity.
For twenty years, this is me,
this is you. Why?
Where the grocer walks,
let us walk too.
Walk from your parked car
to the heat of my heart,
leave the ice, the chapped hands,
of the old life behind us.
Let us go somewhere
so warm we never
need woolens or mittens,
where there is nothing
that cannot be done naked.
Open your door, listen,
I’m singing to you.