ALONE

He grows used to the sound of the floor

Not yet     Not yet     each evening

right before the news comes on.

Then the killing and the stabbing

and the beating and the crashing.

Turn it off. There’s a smudge on the wall,

a Jesus with a blazing heart.

His coffee cup waits

upside down on its plate.

The shape of dinner tastes upside down.

He eats whatever the nurse-lady left him,

the hamburger in its three-day shirt.

Sometimes he doesn’t know the name

of what he eats.

He hauls his body to the porch,

sinks his eyes into the weeds.

A hose curls in the lilies.

If he could reach it,

make it down

those three crooked steps . . .

When his wife died he was very quiet

for one day. Then he smiled

and smiled with his two teeth

for the bad time they had

that was over.

His tongue could sound Soledad or Solamente

for his bones and his blood and his few good hairs.

When the drop of water on the white sink

meets the next drop and they are joining,

he thinks of other ways to spend this life

that he didn’t do. He would like to meet them.