Winding up the trash
from the second bathroom
as some declining Mahler
drifts like fog of the Baskervilles
with all intents and purposes
diverted for some short
and necessary suspense,

following the stacked
furniture like a trail
of jawbone carnage and fishhooks
from all adventure tales and
outdoor books, intricate operas,
and insidious reasonings, in-
delicately, and uncompensated
by symphonic grandeur,

resting upon homely instruments
scraping and stirring dry or wet
the dull linoleum the dentist
had laid before we moved
in or could speak our minds,

I'll mop the house in a minute
and raise from the disorderly
spindle another record, cast
awry for its cheap thinness
and imperfect center.

While Keats feared the verges
and lusted for the grand
There to settle
Here, broke his last
and stronger lung, tore his chest
to light, and doctors
wondered at how long
he'd kept it in,

and while Roethke's verges
were his ground, the turning
planes of sanity where
his red and plasmic needs
were thin enough to manage,
sharp enough to hurt,
taut enough to sound,

in no despair, but mostly
unsurprised at treachery and chance,
I tread a ghosted ground
between the middle and the ends,
between betweens and sliding
like a chain on ceramic tile
new mopped and shining.