Gerald Stern’s “Her Right Eye Catches the Lavender”

Her Right Eye Catches the Lavender

FOR JUDY ROCK

What is the eastern gull called? Is it the same one

that floats in the Iowa River? I read in Birds

it has pink legs – yellow eyelids in summer.

Why did I never see that? Can I drive

a thousand miles to live among them, watch

them hop and lift their wings a little, see them

fold their legs back as they soar? Someone

named Rock was walking by the water; she threw

salami at them. Knowing her as I do

I know she chose one of them and pursued him

relentlessly—her eye is part of her mind –

and though there would be patter she never would lose him

until he was gone. I don't know how she feels

about them as scavengers, I don't know if she

calls them rats with wings, or if she finds them

endearing, as I do, with their gorged bodies

and drooping wings – gobbling doves – if she

forgives them, as I do, for their gluttony,

if she watches them fighting the currents, if she compares them

to hawks, if she compares them to pigeons. After

her walk on the beach she lay down with her clothes on

in one of those shingled houses, on starched sheets

with eyelets at the borders, maybe flowers –

faded peas or roses. There was a roomful

of crisp white linen, there was a pear-shaped bottle

with three carnations, there was a wedding bouquet

with ivory streamers – curled up on the bureau –

and there was a drawing of Thomas Hardy's birthplace

in Dorset, and a painting above the bed

of an apple orchard in bloom, it was cloudy

and humming. She woke up at six and watched

the light get stronger in the windows, the one

a lemon pink, the other a pearl gray,

both of them filled with branches, and she thought

a little about her happiness. Day and night

the gulls eat, although they rest; they fall

asleep in a second. Even if there is some shifting,

even gurgling, they are asleep. It is

sleep that alters their rage, sleep slows down

their appetites, it is their only substitute

for pity – even as it renews

their life of greed. I think she must get up,

I think she smiles; she rummages through her suitcase

looking for something, she kneels at the right foot of the bed

with one hand under her chin; her right eye catches

the lavender. I have her letter, I am

more voracious than I was seven years ago

but I am more lenient. I watch them catch the wind,

then race downstream. Why did it take so long

for me to get lenient? What does it mean one life

only? Could I not stand in the mud

beside my black willow, thinking of her and loving her?

--Gerald Stern