The sun grows garish, then gaunt.
An acting orange organ
in the bedroom,
embouchure.
This is the way you’ve come to me this evening—
in a box, on the wall, reflected.
Lodged
in the slatted
shadows of the shutter,
then not even there.
Before the orange ebbs completely,
into the autumn night and
you abscond,
I strain myself to listen
for a tune
of your affections.
One comes up from the loin of my tongue,
like muddy
waters onto my lips.
Though this could be a phantom too—
illusory
as nightfall on Uranus.
Questions and Answers
What inspired “Embouchure”?
This poem came out of a period of frustrated love, and loss. To evoke the complex mix of emotion I was feeling at the time, I drew on image, diction, imagination, and thought—and threw in a little punch at the end with the word “Uranus.”
This poem “Embouchure” originally appeared in Canadian Literature 165 (Summer 2000): 76.
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