Dog Days
Is it the plane tree leaves curling back in thirst
these scruffy fag-end dry dog days
as I walk the streets of the little town
that make me remember standing over a metal sink
with my sister
trying to keep our breakfast down
as we digest, together,
both our marriages are over?
Through her kitchen window
the jadepaper silver of the eucalyptus
seemed to want to say something
and I thought, then, it was just that we could live,
in that drought, a ghostly, famished sort of life,
which we set about living
with a jadepaperthin, sackcloth-ghostly sort of gusto,
taking the comfort of wine
and our children to our beds, for comfort,
ignoring the plane trees shedding their lustral bark
and the oyster softness of the eucalyptus
lifting itself up to us
if we would only stand under it in Autumn lacelight
and listen to the house, alive, humming on all its levels,
the years ahead dressed up, waiting at the front door,
and the plane trees and the eucalyptus
all saying yes.
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