Bonnard's Nudes by Raymond Carver

His wife. Forty years he painted her.
Again and again. The nude in the last
painting the same young nude as the first.
His wife.

As he remembered her young.
As she was young.
His wife in her bath. At her dressing
table in front of the mirror. Undressed.

His wife with her hands under her breasts
looking out on the garden.
The sun bestowing warmth and color.

Every living thing in bloom there.
She young and tremulous and most desirable.
When she died, he painted a while longer.

A few landscapes. Then died.
And was put down next to her.
His young wife

When This Boat Comes

When this boat comes,
its boatsman will take my
coin, dulled by the years
and I will wonder about all the ways
I never took.

I'll give every missed one
a fine name, a music in the mouth,
tending, as all lost chances do,
to the last tick of anyones clock.

And when done, the coin in his pocket, I'll abandon need and find only this pier, this boatsman... this boat.


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