Tiffany Shade
1974
Comb-bound: 71 pp.
Published: 1997
Price: $9.95
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Tiffany Shade explores the poetic nature of life’s routines. With his detailed, imagistic depiction of both daily activities (making business trips, living in a small Midwestern town, settling into married life) and mystical events (contemplating imminent parenthood, celebrating holidays and birthdays), Brodsky restores the love, humor, beauty, wonder, and appreciation for living so often overlooked in the rush of day-to-day existence, exulting in "sweet seasons of deep youth" even as he feels his own daydreams "gather fuzzy dust."
Animus
The dappled spirit rises inside its dwelling.
A slender privacy, at best, protects
The shell from a persistent wearing away
One day at a time. Dawn shows black
As the scratchy insides of a burlap sack.
The heart, seeking new frontiers to kiss,
Ventures out blindly, each beat as critical
As a prospector's steps along deep cliffs
On his way up out of a valley, loaded with gold.
Even the eyes fly ahead to scout aliens
Trained in the fatal arts of complacence
And ugliness. A gap glowing roseate
Opens just ahead — chrysalis or dream-hole,
Difficult to know. Two butterflies collide
In a sensual, bending spiral, alive as light
Framed by their transparent wings.
It's the unseen design that reminds me of you.
