Dear Seth
Now Chris is visiting you
in Northampton and the house around
me exists
just one room at a time
Nelson Mandela has died
The radio
can think of little else
You would not believe my pride
at having shoveled the driveway
My shame
when I fail
to start the fire
I am actually
alive inside this mythic air
a child assigns
to the time
before its birth
Were there a proverb for this week
it’d go a little like
He who lives
inside a snowglobe always drowns