28.

Granny said “if only I had a nickel
for every homemade biscuit I’ve made.”
As a boy, I looked at my granny as
the grandest of the land. We’d venture out

into nature together & pick blueberries
(“the poetry of the earth is death”).
She’d point out to me the names of
flowers & plants. Now I’m half-dead

in black-&-white, the hag of eternity,
& I’m thinking of a muffled workforce
& why people complain when they’ve
“got it made,” which is like complaining

about being bitten by a flea while being
eaten by a bear. Home is where the heart
isn’t & I’m there. I’m bathing off with
a startling starling dishcloth. I feel like

a human scorpion. The sky this day
is as clear as cuddling. Every precious
stooge adores me. Time is a murmur.
I’m in a foxhole, rolled & downturned.

Grasshoppers hiding in my head. 
It must’ve been incredible to have a name
like “Grace Hopper”. My granny stares out
of her kitchen window, wide-eyed hazel eyes,

while nasty Nostalgia helium-howls at me
louder than a monk’s silence. My pawpaw
is covered in oil as he comes into the house
& my uncle & I hang in the sky like

a heavy jar full of stained glass holding up
the universe’s milk. I told him that my eyes
are pale asleep this day, as he uprooted
dandelions from the hard, Georgia ground,

reminding me of the loss of things, the way
Carly Simon sings about nothing ever staying
the same, so you have to play the game
& I now hang my head from this window

the way one is weighed by thought, alone.
The way that a coffin-cover will always hide
the remains, of what Is and Never Was.