after 23 days at sea
birds with the faces of dead sailors fall at my feet
i send them to you mary anne
a crossbill and a snowbird
a triton rears its frightful head
loops its tail across the horizon
they say i'm fond of map drawing
they say i'm fond of gaiety
i'd rather sail to corvo than go down to tunbridge wells
the scheme would be more enlarged
the compass never works
i swear mary anne no one ever knows where we are
rats snipe and so forth
the dinner oversets
how we laugh when the tea things break
even so i eat broth without spilling
the end of July at fort erie and hot
i sleep in a dirty house these nights
and with no one to drive
go nowhere
the afternoon i set out with francis
to drive myself to mrs tice's
the sky is dark and heavy
everywhere green
so much green it makes me cold
i crave brown
it would take only a little to warm me
but there is none so i wear two fur tippets
the road is very bad and francis cries
i'm afraid he might bounce out
so i stop and tie him to the seat
when we get to mrs tice's we have tea
did i mention the pigeons mary anne
how they darken the sky
and drink the pond dry
how the men stand on the roof
and pluck them from the sky
we eat their wings and breasts salted
from a barrel
sixty years later the butler
pushes me in my chair across the wet grass
each morning until i die
the parish priest
delivers my eulogy one long afternoon
but mary anne
all they've kept is my presentation skirt
you remember the flowered brocade
it's on a pedestal now
in the hall