Calligraphy
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From now on the marigolds will cast my shadow for me.
A green awning adjusting my fate. Leaving the sidewalk.

Any admonishment: The dogs barking beneath open October
windows. Child’s glue, white, turned yellow, hardening

around the edge. Valenciennes against the shop window, sun spotting through. The day just ending, and the dust rising to vespers.

The pears slowly rotting into fruit flies in their wooden superette crates.
The greengrocer’s tufts of pocketed tobacco and my own valerian laced stare.

And still it’s always you, filled with some strange grown-up vagary,
tucking my hair behind my ears, so that the hours can collapse

to darken the world into the deeper sienna of your hair. Behold us
still there in the vanilla evening, my thin linen self awaiting your direction.