[Download formatted PDF at this link.]
All the signs are coded
in another box of hours
Sundaysun shines even on December’s graveyard
(we enter innocent)
where under Siamese slate, two daughters sleep
elsewhere a man, alone, he was
aged “about thirty-six” (that’s all we know)
Unbidden, a professional poet
calls by proxy from a stone
lamenting “Treasure Lost”
lest we forget to love everyone enough
who’s dear.
And not just the nameless
Young Vanderbilt’s bronze bust
– kept in the house(!) –
a nude tormented trophy
(truly, in his twenties, to typhus)
tries to tell the tourists
about the afterlife
but can’t,
constrained by library decorum
and social etiquette
Then shopping
and another sign appears
in narcolescent twilight
An actress – femme ephemeral –
emerges from a magazine
and sidles up beside yourself
to confide commercially
that “Life is short,
so make the most of yours”
in bold italic type
Remember that –
good line
* * *
