Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Like the Dark-Haired Girl in Blue

Clearing the Space

by Phillip Lopate

I am clearing the space for a lover
to enter my life, I am clearing off a big space.
Today when I went bicycling I saw
on the grass one lover pair after another.
They were lying on each other, like rugs, or fur coats,
and all you could see was the shag of a redhead
or the lips a boy pressed down on a girl
while their lips held chastely still.

I walked my bicycle past them, thinking
for a moment of every lover I had ever enjoyed,
and when none of them made my heart sink
and when I experienced no pain,
then I knew I was free of them
and that I was clearing a new space
as big as my life, as big as the pasture
the lovers were linked on.

I am preparing a space for the loved one,
I know what she looks like already.
She looks like the dark-haired girl in blue
I only saw for a second, before her Spanish lover
smothered her.
Then, when I circled back on my bike, she was on top.
But I rode on, because my time will come
and meanwhile I'm preparing a space,
I am cutting the grass, for the loved one to walk on;
I am cleaning my heart, making my thoughts
unrancorous,
learning to be patient.
And if it should prove not to be in the end
a woman, not to be a human lover entering
after all, but something fuller and sadder, like the
world,
like God, I will only say, I suspected it all along.