The entrance to the house is cool and shady.
Inside there are violins and mousseline carts
elegantly educated ladies.

Reverence was never required
and the bouncer seeks only that you misbehave
to enter. Why stand outside the gates?

There’s no spotlight on you.
Your body was never a temple.
So why do you walk from wall to wall
trailing feathers of leavened sorrow?

When my father lost his words
we wanted to take him to the sea.
We were his children, painting him
into comers, into the scene of ourselves.

How could he tell us to leave?
By dosing his eyes.
That –
and the night in his eyes deepening.