The Morning Reading: "slices of green pepper on a bone-white dish"

Song
~ Robert Hass

Afternoon cooking in the fall sun—
who is more naked
                           than the man
yelling, “Hey, I’m home!”
                  to an empty house?
thinking because the bay is clear,
the hills in yellow heat,
& scrub oak red in gullies
that great crowds of family
should tumble from the rooms
             to throw their bodies on the Papa-body,
                      I-am-loved.

Cat sleeps in the windowgleam,
                   dust motes.
        On the oak table
      filets of sole
    stewing in the juice of tangerines,
       slices of green pepper
          on a bone-white dish.


(As seen this summer on Addison Street, part of the Berkeley Poetry Walk. My young son Louis read it aloud and laughed and laughed at the "Papa-body" line.)

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