Winter Landscape

Tout était comme dans une image enfantine
Robert Desnos


it was all as if underwater: indigo
magpie
              white white sky the coralline
sagebrush spiky with hoarfrost a copy of
Bettleheim’s The Uses of Enchantment un-
opened on a maple nightstand
a chrome guitar’s rattle &
whine behind a glass door
              a green tinsel “Happy
Holidays” banner strung between streetlights

you can never set foot in the same room twice
a sea-change
              the implacably lonesome Sonoma
coast March 1988 a Winston cigarette in Virginia’s
Valentine’s Day rain 1986
              the creamsicle sunlight in
Malibu May 2000
today’s pale headlights at noon a
sea-change a
              bass clarinet intoning “Full
Fathom Five” meditative but stolid
hope against hope
                      6 of one
will you go home for Xmas
will you go
will you go home

plastic dinosaurs an overdue
credit card statement you placed a
red leather bookmark between the pages of
The Complete Lewis Carroll &
forgot it
              a naked cottonwood a silver
hay tarp like coming awake unsure where you are

Jack Hayes
© 2010