They were difficult to find. It was summer so
they were dust dry and sky blue. Lighter, liminal, quite likely
to follow a line completely lacking in depth.
Louise dreamed a clowder of cats was eating yesterday’s dinner
of snapper and fennel. Ham dreamed a hand
was playing a tin-can piano note twice too many times.
The other lay awake listening to a radio static
at the base of the stapes deep in the damaged right ear.
Soon, August would trade its heat
for September’s cool shroud. The loose weave, a seize, Louise said,
through which the tail will fall through: dysthymic October,
deathy November.
December, a drear pentimento—unveiling the mouth
at abeyance, the mind at undone. Boneheap, rock beach,
birdie girls crooning in swan-feathered caps.
O seasons, O castles, Ham said, there’s still the slight flutter
of blood in an outlying vein, light trained on a landscape
of shoulder with faint smell of soap.