We’ve received the morning post;
Royal Mail has sent a roast:
Let the ten-pound package lie

Those heavy, drowned-washrag, still moonless nights
our hands would test the blindness of our faces,
tourists scratching their names on marble columns

Something isn’t right with me. 
We climb in the hot July 
car three thousand feet from Laramie 

The palms looked wary even in broad afternoon,
thin women in fancy ribbed hats.
Beyond them the hooded sweep of the St. Johns

I thought (and before it was too late) 
my heart had begun to turn, that was 
shut to love, for I was adamant 

Oh I have felt these same 
yearnings in myself— 
the tiny dark and yellow 

The gravid gecko lies
aslant a stalk of banana, 
just a tilde over

The children play at the Luxembourg fountain.
Their small ships catching wind and sail out and come round again.

Beneath a sky whose hardened violets
still chase a warm front’s temperatures along,
the mockingbird and mourning dove create

Deep in the house your Singer sang its dirge,
one more thread clipped stealthily from conscience.
Who sewed the gowns and blouses of the Fates?