The flowers are everywhere, pungent and bright. / It could be autumn, eighteen-fifty-seven.

It began / with the Stain. / The Stain, my Stain / red on a white bedspread / covered with bristles / of nylon thread.

Scarlatti’s sheet music lies / on the floor near the piano / and a catalog for later perusal / is sprawled in full color / near the computer.

I don’t know why death wants me or why death wakes me to press her bones against my backside. The ringing is incessant now. She has to know this.

I recall as kids when our obsession would / lead us into the thick backwoods / next to the decommissioned railway / line, our pockets stuffed with ribbons

The sun slept this evening in clouds of mounting gray / Tomorrow will bring the storm, and evening, and night

That bowl, whose waves long ago gently caressed / the scent of Sunday dinners, finally washed up / in the swampy cul-de-sac of my kitchen counter.

I feel the kind of sticky / I should feel if this were Georgia, / if I were in an Alice Walker novel / with a fist full of blackberries / staining my southern grin.

Follow the script and the scripture. / Even the biography of the damned / is told with sobbing compassion.

I’m a laid off mooch / of a prof using up fuel / to cut grass close / around apple trees / where voles eat roots / and breed and breed / deep in the grass, hidden / from fox and hawks.