The facts. Just the facts. And nothing but the facts.

Deep August.

On some island

yellow, scrawny

I struggle with words

english and rounded.

Conversations dipped

in sea water; sand

in the bowels of Penguin

modern classics.

Hotel room.

Two childish, small frames,

too out of scale.

The plaster peels off the walls.

It bothered me at first

it soothes me now.

I shouldn’t be asking for more.

The sheets are thin, transparent almost

cool in the afternoon breeze.

The bed creaks.

On the desk,

four empty bottles of water

in a line.

An unused ashtray. A pen.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

The poplar trees outside molt.

White fluff on white everything.

Cicadas explode

on paper like loaded words

I dare not play putty with.

Roget’s Thesaurus.

A grey cat that photographs well

on the yellow wooden chair.

A man;

American and cultured and clean

but most of all a lover

of everything well-crafted and original –

            books shoes voices

            a certain clean light in the afternoon.

Leather sandals

Khakis

Soap

Boxes as categories to arrange the world

The marble under the bathroom door

is cracked and loose.

I have to put it back together every time I forget

not to step on it.

The first day, the shower hardly trickled.

This morning it poured.

I washed

and washed

made the bed

pulled the sheets

folded the blanket

puffed the pillows

placed them

on top of each other

everything in place.

The room crisp

almost un–lived in

light

wood

cotton

aloof marble

water

cedarwood

lemon

fig

rounded english words

fizzle and evaporate

and an unexpected fleeting scent of winter

brings to mind upstate New York