ManicDDaily

After reading another’s poem mistakenly posted for Bloomsday

I once visited Joyce’s Martello Tower
the place where he and Kinch ate breakfast,
I always think of the cream in the milk that they poured
into their tea and imagine its paisley
in my own; I too use whole milk, un-
homogenized;
and there I saw a woman (though it was December)
just stepped from the drink, meaning
the Irish Sea, rosy as damask, she rubbed the the apples
of her flesh so as to shine them. All she wore was
a two piece or maybe really just bra and undies, and a grin
as wide as a lifting tide. 

I swim myself, Decembers—
I call it swimming, what I mean is that I take
a plunge and splash into frigid waters and then
come out grinning, grabbing a towel
as bright as a cloud, my skin scoured
by the cold and the rough terry, 
saying yes to everything. 

But the crazy thing (now that I have thought
all of this through) is that, although the poem I read
this morning was posted for Bloomsday,
today is July 16, not June,
and so there was no true call
for this memory of bright waters
and grinning flesh, but there it is,
and yes, I still say, yes.

**********************

Haha.  I confess to often using the Writer’s Almanac as a jumping off place for my own poem, in the mornings, and today, there is a mistaken post for Bloomsday, June 16, which is the day in which James Joyce’s novel Ulysses takes place. Anyway!  (The picture is some approximation of Joyce’s tower at Sandycove, Dublin—you’ll have to picture the woman from the poem!) Have a good day!

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