Reiteration

Basil's Last Days

I knew right off the bat I'd leave this house
with a scalp knit full of ticks.
The ticks we all mistook for raisins
on the teakwood floor. We were humming,
unaware that the sound that kept us uniform
was the Airedale's dying moan.
I love my family but they rattle like
a pocketbook of stones.
It's time to leave this waxy carsick jungle,
get back to where we can make jam
and be cold in the afternoon.
The veterinarian is on the telephone.
He says that Basil's system's in decline.
She dies because of her electrolytes.
He just means the domino effect,
but Nick picks up his cue and says the
system of the universe can't end.

Friday we ate quiche the color of the eclipsed moon.
We had to guess ingredients: Charlie knew
the raspberry by its inimitable seeds.
I, dull-wit, tasted only carrot
and a false idea of cream. Fall is coming on
and I'm up to my old tricks again.
Redundant conversations on Atlantic Ocean rocks,
watching the waves go the grey of sore-eyed
waking dawn. I have never gotten sick of salt--
the flavor worn into my wind rough skin
and I want to turn suddenly old
so I am stiff and sharp and permanent
a gesture: bony, unadorned,
a branch of the hydrangea tree.

Dark chocolate wakes my mother from her grog
in the humid afternoons she calls winter
now, New England lost, the windows dripping sweat.

She puts water on for tea. We make a pact
for clemency, clemency in the
intervening days.

There is the matter of my sister: her fretted blood
warming in the heat pipes of her veins.
Which we avoid, and talk instead of

how I was conceived
because she did not want to paint the living room.
How she stays thin on chocolate, meat, and tea,
while I eat bread and jam.