The untying of a knot
Divorce, how ugly.
Ugly all the people.
Brutal their faces
and stunned, crude.
How stupid the broken family
like so many dropped
crates of gaily painted china
bought on holiday when you
imagined the meals at home,
at home, the wildflower
plates in the kitchen sun,
saucers for peaches and
ginger cream, rainy afternoon
with Chopin shaking the ficus,
the record with the deep scratch
but you don't care, and
the line of lemon trees
up the drive,
yellow, yellow,
the right faces, mirror-to-mirror.
One nail drives out another.
How far to reality from here?
Names as close as your own
veer into other trajectories.
You enter a din, you're late,
main course already served.
And where were you
on the day everyone remembers?
How sentimental the future is,
all unearned. But the future,
you say, will have in it
me, me, me.
Wasn't it sad when that great ship
went down, hit the bottom?
You are the first family
to fall. This is a small sloop
and a long reach.
Quick-witted, you fit yourself
to the wind. You say
the Gulf is silky, aquamarine.
You are seen, suddenly
by the sun. You,
with similar fingerprints,
you, who walked up the rue du Paradis.
You're the short division of all,
owner of four forks, four chairs.
Mayes home page
In the summer
The sleeper
Good Friday, driving home
I thought about you
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