Windfall

The truth is, I cannot get into the garden
nor come to the sea. Yes, I have been in gardens
and stood at the shores of oceans, but we're speaking
of fictive things, my haunting metaphors.
Nothing has been resolved, nor anything gained
outside of gratuitous pleasure. Now summer
gains its foothold, burns the desert, burns
the stunted hills that here must serve as mountains.

My second son has made his rebellious yawp
and squirms in his mother's arms, suckling
at swollen breasts that conquered and kept me. Time
slides onward, oiled by motion, a measure
and not a thing itself. We should discuss concretes,
before I bury us in a heap of abstractions.

I stand in windfall, the scattered detritus
and still pristine remains of a feast of giants,
drunk of nectar fermenting for ages, sated
of left ambrosia, a cur on a banquet of crumbs.

But there we have it again, not one existent
in that quatrain. Where should we begin?
Begin. The wind sifts round the house, sighs
at windows, knuckles at doors. There is only one door.

Blinds quiver, cheaply manufactured, cracked;
the bougainvillea covers half the driveway:
Michael's legacy. A litter of toys and garbage
spills from the garage. Is anything accomplished?
A threshold crossed? The bougainvillea is real.


June 18-19, 2001