Tea Lay
after John Clare
A missed tea, that piece of, to say, Off, grief.
We all come, by turns meretricious, to someone's wry relief.
Tangled wit, the ought of risible Tea Lay,
Aspiring to forswear, regretful knees sway.
I blanket or regret, fall to knees (that oldest knot):
To see—and to have been seen—and then seen not.
Eyeing behooves, else glower sense, he vents
At me for rejoining in jaws, summer prying.
Ear-moist, diving highest, I ease a taller thicket,
Announce Time's sick of us, foam in its spigot.
Handmaids mate in teal water (know they're not);
Handsome sires rush thither, upbraid, forged knot.
Cool delay, seeing anhedonian repast,
Too they, at fault, and die; lie calm, moon madder atlas.
— Sharon Dolin
from The Best American Poetry 2007, ed. Heather McHugh
from the archive; first posted on March 09, 2009