Ted Berrigan Spoke When My Eyes

Opened, traced memory patterns,
whorls of illusion in first light
above our bed, shaped in the breeze
that yawned, stretched the curtains
still half in shadow, a hesitant
gauze of a smile, still half-asleep.

There’s a pattern in that light
or the call of a whippoorwill,
its gently insistent song~

qui ko wee, qui ko wee

mixes the palette of dawn
liquid pearl, the early gold
of sun, the promise of blue
on my waking face. Here
is a lingering scent of skin
sweet with patchouli, an earthy
tang of tobacco, a you smell
like a familiar ghost present
in the morning motes or a certain
slant of sunlight I read about once
in a poem, grainy words swimming
in layers of its milky photograph.