Tom

When is the body a gift,
really? For this day’s history
slips through my window:
the hazing citronella, the din
of mosquitoes, the sun-faded
raw sienna of sky bruising
to carbon, the registers of
classic rock radio and quarreling
children. It all slips through,
ashy and as heavy as wine
in the afternoon, and it could be
that it is only the town’s
pre-rigor mortis settling down,
a body that enters and sleeps
upon the bones: Redding or
Rock Springs, could be Pocatello
for all I know, but whatever
the town, it is dying no quicker
than anything else that has
just smoldered, just cindered a little.

Save for that man across
my street, Tom Carlson, he
without his shirt, inching
the washing machine toward
the apartment’s doorframe. From
this distance, I am with him,
shouldering the machine ajar,
and from this distance,
I know the room of his late
adolescence: the chin bar,
the dumb bells, and on
his dresser, green hair gel, photos
from Tahoe, no cologne. From
this distance, I am with him, inside
sharing beers, laughing, not talking
much, like some lesser brothers
who stayed put. No, I am just
a neighbor now closing a blind.

Wendy stands in the hollow of
shade of the open door. Her need
glazes even the light. She
knows that when Tom gets
this way, when he gets
this way, she’ll soon slip
into her gown, crisp and textured,
and she’ll curl upon the couch
and raise her arm to draw her husband
near, to draw his weight, warmed
with work, upon her. The ebbing,
the shivering twilight outside
cools the air as a cumulus grown heavy,
ungirdling with rain.

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