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