Last Friday’s flowers bow their parching heads;
dust slowly claims their yellows, pinks, and reds.
Friedrich’s Wanderer hangs on the wall,
sublime even when flat and dull and small.
The narrow mirror waits to show a face.
Persephone and Demeter embrace
in plastic painted white to look like marble.
Even the shadows on the wall seem artful
and abstract, like a softly whispered word.
A tiny fruit fly’s buzzing goes unheard.
Books with cracked spines lie stacked in wooden drawers.
Grime covers the blue carpet on the floor.
The calendar picture changes every day;
the lane outside the window doesn’t. Clay
pots house little succulents, their ashy green
limbs like jade jewelry. The mute machine
of everyday existence spins and spins.
The days pile up like garbage in a bin.
Faces grow old. Only your things remain:
your bought belongings are the links that chain
you to yourself, to other people. Shoes
lurk underneath the bed, more real and true
than all the evening’s thoughts and brief impressions.
You yield to sleep, surrounded by possessions.