Matthew Thorburn

 

At Eighty

My neighbor the painter doesn’t know me anymore. Recognizes his wife sometimes—a glimmer as she guides him to a chair, puts a piece of apple in his hand. He doesn’t say much, but when I hum an old song, “Tea for Two,” “My Romance,” he sings along. Where do the words live inside him? He still works some mornings, though his pictures grow smaller, lighter. A few faint strokes—pale green for leaves, petals yellow-orange—as if saying, Fine, enough, you know what this is.

 

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Anything More

She’s caught a little off-guard,
I think, since her left shoulder’s back
a bit as if she’s still turning
toward the camera, and a hint
of a smile slips out—a quarter-smile,
an eighth—that makes me feel like

Elizabeth Bishop’s about to say
something funny back to me.
Not that I took this picture. Not that
I was even there. It must be
1970-something and I’m still a boy
in Michigan, awkward only child

turning inward, pretending
to be somewhere else, while she stands
outside, maybe in Maine,
the trees a painterly blur, coppery
oranges and browns. She’s
dressed in layers for the changing

season—blue plaid jacket over
a red cardigan, a wide-collared blouse.
I heard from a friend who heard
from a friend (who knew her)
she didn’t like to talk about her poems,
and what would I say except

tell me about that grimy gas station,
the peppy black dog who’s
not ashamed, the sandpiper I think of
every time I go to the shore and
see a sandpiper? In this moment
that will never end, she looks happy

or close enough. She looks like
the great aunt, ironic yet tender,
I wish I could’ve talked to when I was
a boy. I want to imagine
her words, but what comes back
is the story I heard about her

poetry class. How carefully
she would fold a student’s poem
so the bottom edge covered up
the last few lines—the anything more
that didn’t need saying—and say,
Now, what if the poem ended here?

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Matthew Thorburn‘s new book is String, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2023. His previous books include The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Dear Almost, which received the Lascaux Prize. He lives in New Jersey.