Look, Someone Has Moved From The Beautiful Neighbourhood Where Roses Die

A rose screamed, dying in sleep,
and from that a July day
was born.

The heart of a lonesome
little spider trembled in
the corner of a deaf room.

Carpets, and clumsy, dusty
things abandoned the house,
carrying within themselves
life, stuffy and long.

And love,
stuffy and long, kept falling
out of old letters and books,
onto the blistering highway
until, in a cloud of stuffy
dust, at the touchingly
ugly exit from town,
the heavy truck vanished.


From HEART OF DARKNESS (White Pine Press, 1998)