Through the blown clouds and the plate glass,
sunlight slides across the chrome fountains.
The Muzak drones like some huge machine

Henry Incinerator danced all night
destroying.

His view of it all like a waltzing boat
found it well, whatever the sounding:
he rode it out on top.

There will never again
be this driveway
of fresh snow, one pair

You are seventeen, your name
is Sally & you
get wet

Today a cold wind travels the earth,
not arid, parching as later it will be,
dragging leaves from branches with a sound

Morning came, in buckles and lace,
asking to be held. The birds began
with sultry murmurs, their notes soon rising like sirens.

The things that abandon you get remembered different.
As precise as the English language can be, with words
like penultimate and perseverate, there is not a combination
of sounds that describes only that leaving. Once,
drinking & smoking with buddies, a friend asked if
I’d longed for a father. Had he said wanted, I would have
dismissed him in the way that the youth dismiss it all:

Beasts
At the threshold
Rats

The ivory wedding hat came tumbling down—
how long had it been stored away, untouched
like desire repressed and bound—