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HOME THOUGHTS
My thighbones are too long for the back seat
and I don't like the tape he's playing.
Not Vaughan Williams' lark right now.
Beside me, you push your dress down
between your legs and keep your hands there,
palms out, squeezing them as the lark
ascends. Talk of the failure of gardens,
heat, humidity, too many shade trees;
only impatiens thrives, a hillock
of pastels where the dog is buried.
Night streets. The man at the wheel
does not see what I see, the skeletons
in sombreros and their baskets of oranges.
But I think you see them. Despite the music,
the deserted sidewalk, the storm stillness
of the brown sky. The air conditioning.
I am a studious gardener. Walled in
by climbing roses that will not bloom.
Sensitive to distant thunder. Keeping
a strict space away from the orange blossom
teeming from the warm mulch of your lap,
the lark gone beyond earshot, famine
in carnival costume lining the road ahead.
   
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