Baby Come Today, October 4th
Ecstatic experiences with nature
This is an automatic furnace
Do not drop or roll
Do not handle with squeeze lift truck
Handle with care
This is a piece of quality assured
Home heating and cooling equipment
The Ohio Valley Container Corporation
Made its container to stand
A resistance bursting test
Of over 200 pounds per square inch
Not an inch a metaphor,
These words are on my window
There is no pane, the first frost comes
The second baby, we'll have to
Turn up the heat, eat nothing
And breathe through a rose
Emulating the butterfly's patterns
And the repetitive indifference of leaves
Turning pink, color of the rose, so flushed
Orange color, color of trees
Ecstatic mists train us, no feeling
No feeling, only moving beginning
The pane crashed, baby falls
Between loose pelvis onto the sheet
Watches leaves blow wind onto window
Ecstatic poets bend over, watch the thin doctor
He's in the light, this is a chore or task
Leaves blow the rose upside down up and down the street
Interior blowing toward muscles and thighs
Bending up and down, pictures of people
The butterfly replaces the hat
Every inch of the sheet is ironed
Practice matches a new sculpture of thought in ephemeral
stretching
The space is no bigger than needed
Air and water all around, pennies in water
I foresee a taste for display in blowing up and down
The crown describes only fantastic gems in air
No loose signs of what the teas will do for you
Fear a moment of taking longer than the warmth lasts
The visitors and the coaches then speak of their intention
For time to deny any atrophy or waste, even the giggles
Later longer than warmth not in inches
But in wrappings of leaves for warmth and evenness
The warm colors, the cold blue curtains between the sun and the moon
After pretension to be singly devoted to one's task is swayed to love
Then the simple movement from inside to outside
Become astonishment, red yellow orange and eyes bright
Sophia Crystal foretells as I foresee absence of memory who
sings eternally
Only to sing more and more
Bernadette Mayer, "Baby Come Today, October 4th" from Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The Collected Early Books of Bernadette Mayer. Copyright © 2015 by Bernadette Mayer. Reprinted by permission of Station Hill Press.
