Ten Past Eleven

This is the time of day the mailman comes.

This is the mailman who dreams every night

that his mother is home from vacation in the grave

waiting to greet him in the kitchen in the sun.

He goes on down the sidewalk in his brisk black shoes.

All the homesick letters ever written are dangling

from the halltree in his brain. We are nowhere

near the ocean, there is sunlight everywhere.

Life has a curiosity undreamt of in other ages.

We dream in circles, answer our own loveletters,

stir soups all day in kitchens for the dead.

They primp in our mirrors, borrow our talcum powder,

and depart by way of the backyard picket fence.

This was the light we found ourselves in once

when everyone kept coming through the musty vestibule

on their way in to see us where we sat in the sun.