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

VII

The rain, lapidarian,
has come back again, without a word.
The world, bluish and gauzed, gazes through
an interminable pause. It looks
flat, bereft of banditos.
My love takes
a napkin from his lap, which he folds,
and unfolds, and refolds.
Is there fire? Is there embroidery?
The un-umbrella'd spiders sleep,
fat in their spider dreams, gnat-happy,
replete of slinking missions.
All is accomplished
here, in the backstep of skeletons,
in the mash of miscellanea.
All is compost below the mirador.
The hostas bloom a single purplish flower
as the crow flies,
paper-airplanes the limp sky,
bent as the ragged shoulders of a former gent.
Is there succotash on Wednesdays
served on a table without legs?
Is the brioche brittle
or consumed?
It is neither evening, nor afternoon.
A stone torso is gored by a lit candle in an art gallery.
That alone is indisputable.