Words for a winter’s day.
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The Quiet Museum
A lonely heart
an empty room
a slumbrous day:
is all too much
for birdlike souls
to hold aloft
and stop the fall,
the breaking in
a hundred parts
is all, is all
I dream of
all the noon.
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Once upon a time there was a little boy who wore yellow galoshes and a blue rain slicker everyplace he went, in the summer and fall and winter and spring. He was maybe six years old now, but you couldn’t be sure, looking at him, because nowadays all the boys were overgrown or undersized, depending on the lunches their mothers packed and the books their fathers read at night. His hair was the color of straw and a little shaggy all around, and his bangs fell in front of his eyebrows like little dusty blinds.
————
I profess, I am a lousy soul
My mind is short on wit
I had a charge to study hard
But made short work of it.
————
The people in the world are walking in pairs down the street, cooing like doves as they pass the pretty blossoming trees. I am a lonely wretch who sits on the bench by the side of the path and watches them all walk on, singing a set of lonely-heart songs as the minutes and hours pass on.