The summer has made the trees large;
their fat leaves give tremendous shade.
What has grown is our sunny loss.
The house, the yard, the decks, are cool.
In front of the bathroom mirror he starts
a mental grocery list: kefir and floss.
Look. He is making his slow journey from bed
and letters and soon will climb to the upper deck
where the sun is now above the trees;
everyone will escape the complicated shade;
did you think simplicity would arrive with May?
Should I, or should I not, say please?
From the high deck I see a man already warm
in the street below, walking a dog in the sun.
There’s no coolness out there, below the cloudless sky.
He is wearing a white, short-sleeve, shirt. A moment ago
I was freezing on my bed, reading about Martin Amis
and the heiress he left his wife for; sly
physical, humor; discombobulated novels;
rhetoric not for reasoning, but to win,
until the other, when you die, easily gets revenge.
Did I love enough? Did I love in the right way?
Things get tangled up in the cool house.
Death is a sunny day.