Sketches of a Dead Man Breakfasting with God -- Star Black

XII

Movie music,
dusk's deliveries—
clouds bunch as brambles under a faint snow,
the shroud of light a pallid glow,
mute as a mummer in the vaudeville hour.
It has rained and unrained
in the pine-lined bower
where, here and there, puce impatiens splay,
sheltered by sculpted rows
of streaked-leafed hostas,
where fleas retreat as if to think:
"Shall I tackle a branch or a flower?"
Oceans bob in faraway skeins of loam
in the betwixt home
of emptied space.
My love shall trace bardic taps
across the stage,
Bojangles in Stratford-on-Avon,
in the opening and re-opening nights in Hartford.
Very toney, very too-too.
The sky, its whiskered rain,
is soft and gentle.
The weather, unlike the play, will change.
The director is masterful,
and over the hill.
Fleas buzz around his bowler and cane.