I have been allowed to go on living in this
room. I am not asked to explain my presence
anywhere.

On the sill
the blown-out candle

Yellow infers from itself papayas and their pulp,
penetrable yellow.
At noon: bees, sweet stinger and honey.

Jesus’s passion is purple and white,
very close to joy.
Purple is tart, it will ripen.

That night you giggled quietly in your sleep—
Lovely transparent dreamer, I could see
The singed-beige kittens tumbling there again…

A day painted like a child’s room
In bright colours; red pillar box
Where Loomis mailed your pristine letters

 Dolphins at every corner, bees
 The size of fists, and pinecones
 Bigger than the Pope’s crown—

So you permit him to walk you home,
Assenting as he hovers at the door,
As if assent were all you had to lock

A valedictory hand swims up
Through metal as I grasp it, then the glare
Of summer spills like lacquer on the floor.

They were the decisive icy fingers
of geology class brought home, stretching
into the parkway.