an elegy
Indolent and watery, the nightcrawlers sprawl
four of five a stride, all the way
to the mailbox. The robin on top’s a bleary orb,
a rumpled bird ball fat with reprobation,
burdened out of flight by the realm’s false coin.
Nothing but wet fliers from the better life,
nothing but bills, advertisements lurid with bait.
Here’s a card from my sister, where the water’s not
fit to drink; here’s a catalog featuring
a million dollar bra. Licking the pages
will quench a thirst. And the robin, so fat
he cannot rise when I approach,
coasts down to the mud of the road.
There the worm meat’s strung for miles,
and nearby the sated cat, having neither conscience
nor appetite, maintains its vigilant wait.
The trick, they say, is in loving the rain,
the ghastly abundance of open-mouthed flowers.
Some of the worms shine and swell—pink
seductive curls. They want it,
slurs the bird, and the ground fog whispers, So do I.
Now the red flag has fallen, now the thin door has closed.
As for the cat, it was all sometimes too much for him:
a mate’s scent and everywhere a clatter of drops,
the supple and too silent transits green weeds provide for vermin.
He sniffs a worm and looks up perplexed, a tuffet
of down in his whiskers, having mistaken something else entirely
for the sound of rain on the road.