Day 54 1/2

It was the summer of fruit flies

(I try always to name my summers)

in the shoe garden where I
first saw them, lacing fruit
with seed and expelled breath, a swarm of
monkeys with moonlight pale bones
jutting out after curfew, screams swallowed
and coughed down hollow throats

(sometimes they forget to eat and drink)

while I focused on learning piano in the
basement: chord, scale, staccato, do re mi
drunken fingers pecking like hungry beaks
below the pearly surface of night.

Hold back my pink prism, prison
from draining away with washergraywater,
to sweep and scoop the ashes as the snail moves

(counterclockwise,)

knowing full well that waters would lap
their words away soon, knowing full well that
soon means different things to journalists

(and geologists.)