The apocryphal accounts

tell us that a brook ran here

beside a dirty candelabrum,

or some other memorial shrine.

Listen, this is no news.

The itch for greater horizontalness

would drive anybody to delete

a few trees, some water.

And now there are amenities

like the electric pony.

Things have their restart buttons.

The morning tells us so.

You eat your palmful of cranberries

& seek out some good pool

to practice your backstroke in.

But me, I’m always damning

the sky because I can’t

lie down on it. Our lives

could use a minor paint job.

Let’s be a clean stack of envelopes

on a museum front desk.

We can watch the indoor ficus

gleam, giddy, in the manufactured

light, & wait to be put

to whatever use the administration

has in mind.