Ice in a glass at the height of a heat wave.
Then a sleep lull that sends you
to the airless inside of a Halloween hat.
Goodnight.
Then a sled, two mittens, and a film
with two women—one black in black satin,
one white wearing pearls—watched
in a paneled room brought in from an era
that’s over. Good-bye. Outside,
a dust-covered dog’s grave. You, your back
tacked to the seat, basket-weave plastic
on plastic, drive by—your mind
tuned to the news, a glut of miasmic static.
You, a light-bulb filament substitute
for the flame that stands for the awful truth:
the dead of war will now be unknown.
We don’t know, the fire says.
At home, the bird’s last cuttlebone
is a stripe of white in an empty cage.
Human failings are human failings.
Forgive me.
The streetlamps above emit a halogen haze.
The light makes it easy to think
everything here is reversible.