National Poetry Month

[brigdh]

On Reading Edna St. Vincent Millay by Carina Yun

I think about the morning's muezzin
waking me at four-thirty, his song
solemn, I'd stumble out of bed

and bend my knees on the soumak
rug not knowing whether to repent
for those mornings spent under

the fragrance of her umber hair,
the Turkish paper sprawled over us
as she read, or the mornings waking

to the smell of thick coffee,
poured into a ceramic mug painted
with her celadon eyes; it seems

her eyes follow me on deserted walks
over the Galata Bridge, the fisherman's
line pulling beside the fence, a trapped fish,

I wouldn't ever know why she threw
her pearls into the sea, I should have
forgotten her already, but her eyes,

I miss them, her breath I miss,
how to think of those days, as now,
when Millay describes the knots

that bound her beneath the earth's
soil, and the sounds of renewed rainfall
beating on the thatched roof.