The wind has toppled the telescopeover onto the lawn:So much for stars.Your brief shot at the universe, gone.

And the box inside him in which his mother resides is velvet and black and without size.

It is some water lilies and a skull in a decorative pond,and a tiny goldfish swimminglike an animated change-pursemade of brightness and surprisesobserving the moment through its empty eye.

Look! I bear into this room a platter piled high with the rage my mother felt toward my father! Yes, it's diamonds now. It's pearls, public humiliation, an angry dime-store clerk, a man passed out at the train station, a girl at the bookstore determined to read every fucking magazine on this shelf for free.

The last hour waiting patiently on a tray for her somewhere in the future. The spoon slipping quietly into the beautiful soup.