They take you through my life
one poem at a time,
memory’s beast raging
through the pages

The morning’s horn extended a palmful of 
   sand. I felt a dry sprig on my face, frozen

The past of having makes the present
Bleed and then we’re asked to
Forget it like imagined slights

Jill tells me about the
show she is making

The house burst into flame. That’s a cliché, I thought, burst into flame. For I had been reading day and night. Perhaps I left the stove on after cooking an omelet. Or let the lint cake inside the dryer. Such was the fascination of the book, though scholars who study it all their lives, lives that pass in a breath, claim it has no answers. I held my copy close to my chest, 

Here is the world, right beside me,
a little garden with a swing,
some dirt and a red shovel,

I am a child acting Romeo.
I love Juliet desperately
but I cannot say it.

the instant the sky wakes my eyes are shut I’m listening to the rainfall huh 
 huh huh listening to half a lifetime of rainfall isn’t romantic
the sound of rainfall approaching unites with the sound of a solitary car

an ant dies, and no one mourns
a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn’t a crested ibis
a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn

In my spiderweb
You got caught,
My precious.