When breakfast is brought by the morning star,
she is imagining that she is writing in a book with white pages,
and that her coffee which comes in a thin cup will taste
like raspberries. She has been a lily all night
on a pond, and her white petals fold into a cone
as she sees the morning star who delivers the Wall Street Journal
folded on the tray with the china cup and the silver pot.

Water lilies, she thinks, but she
doesn’t write it down. And morning glories. The book is open on
        her lap,
her thick satin nightgown is folded around her.
Raspberries with cream would be nice.
Her husband is sleeping and on the pillow
his gardener’s face, tanned and earthy, moves slightly with his
morning breath. He and she dream different things,
but both wake up against petals, both drink a clear glass of water,
both descend the stairs and find the morning star has brought
their steaming cups,
the fruit,
the grain.

Sometimes I miss the obvious. But often,
the water lilies break open in the sunlight, and the pond
poses for Monet. But when I stand still, I notice
all the mistakes I have made. I noticed also
that I could live forever, and never live my life
differently. I still long for all the things which seemed so elusive
and which I made so many mistakes trying to find. When I wake
        up
in the morning, there is for a moment, the sense that everything
is possible. That I can rewrite my life,
that I can be a different woman. But then the morning star
serves breakfast, and one sip,
whether it be a dark fragrant tea, or a rich
oily cup of dark-beaned coffee,
one sip and I know that my life
is the same one I’ve always lived.
New day.

New day doesn’t mean new life;
it means that you continue to work out afresh
each day
the story you were always destined 
to tell.