The Psychiatrist at the Home
He considers us too exigent, my brother and I.
Childless residents, their walls stuccoed with photographs
stare at birds on the patio. They do without a translator.
In summer, the glass grows hot. Indoor plumage wilts
and trays are left untouched. The psychiatrist has a horse
he will saddle after rounds. I’m meant to watch him gallop off.
Present and future tense must serve.
How much longer will I be able to ride, he says.
We are all dying, your parents too. (A little fodder for the head.)
And something else—the lowest level’s always for the last.
It has its own peculiar court where pink-veined mallows open wide
apian humming risen from the compact holly shrub.
One voice recurs to the animal. I won’t say, to some lower order
but a tortuous note arrests me, finds out every twist in the guts
while the pain-scape is so endless as to seem holy.
One of these days, I’ll become all the time that’s past
as when my fingers grasp the gravedigger’s and all appetite’s gone.
When a beachfront building crumbles, wind rippling soft flanks.