Netherlands
Ann’s Story
I was any three-year-old: a dream of curiosity. If you see
an open door you go through:
that’s what doors are. An inconstancy
of right and wrong – of action and its kinds of truth
had inhabited my vacation head
that holiday – the Netherlands, Nineteen-fifty-two.
And the bright suburban street’s nearest door was ajar, and my tread
still absence-soft enough to pass whichever off-guard parent,
and I was in. I remember a bed,
and solider even than its dark-wood frame the astonishment
at the eyes – on me! – of the woman half-amid the sheets,
small and dense: a surprise of curves. I’ve spent
such heavy hours since, retreading these curving streets
of the words I’ve hung on every memory I’ve had
of those wavering Netherlands, wholly incomplete
by now with passing through and through of that Dutch red,
half-hoping still to find a heart of flesh among the empty sheets
of beds; and every memory a vacated, still-warm bed.