The Writer

He sits in the fraying shirt with epaulettes,
hands placed squarely on the knees, so, loyal perhaps,
back taut. He sits in the beach-dreck chair
facing the south window, the long, taupe, negligible
oblong, where we hear (should we lean)
such tremendous sounds as the landscape affords.
He imagines tart packages of darkness in rotation,
winds over plantains, young birds, rasping yards
and, wrapped under the torrid roots, the thin worms
glistening in their white sinecures, eating the past.
We cherish his hard back. We stand behind him and work
around the den to see his grey ears, thick sideburns,
then notice the sudden fuchsia ridge, the blackened
accoutrements of the smashed face. He’s all caved in.
Days pass. Years. We wander. How could we not wander
about his intense, heavy frame. We watch the faceless one
watching, a damaged cuckold watching the shade
over the skins of the timbers, the skins of the walls
settling in the lank tableau. We are moving like hair
in the powdered light over the atrocious basin
of the head, until we notice the mirror sharply recovering
the battery and disgrace and find we are seated alone,
loving again in the wild escutcheons of the days.