Globe

For Harold Bloom 

Poetry is inexhaustible,

as is the subject of poetry.

This morning I stood on a tower

of books stacked atop my white desk chair.

I was trying to hang the worn globe 

Mary gave me from the rounded lamp 

at the center of the ceiling but 

I couldn’t reach it—my short fingers 

grasped at the air beneath the fixture.

Something had to be underneath

each leg of the chair to separate 

it from the floor: a great, dense volume.

Alone on top of them I could feel

the light, suspend a little world there

in my quiet Brooklyn studio.

The globe spins without needing to be 

touched. Light falls on the golden chain and

afternoon hasn’t even begun.