Four Poems (after an argument)

As I was leaving, I left the door open
Slightly, so you wouldn't close it.
Just enough for a rich stream of air
to trickle across the threshold and your neck.
If you never can come out to find me
Still, may your rooms be sweet up to the rafters.

---

No more wailing or whining
the solid truth
is your empty bed
the quiet hallways
and the long hours of nothing until nightfall.

---

Staring at my foot, and the fly
perched at the end of one, thick, callused toe.
The ropey veins and bones latticed
into the still full flesh of my calf
golden and a little dry, from the sun--
lying in the rough June grass
speckled with slivers of light, slit by the palms.
Only two decades and such a long time.
How do people ever make it to a hundred?

---

The world is ending, or it won't--
No apocalypse is worth carrying
out into the grass.
Than the low motor of a helicopter
or the wafting scent of charcoal--
the future is less, even, than the breeze ambling in the bamboo.
It passes through the yard with not even a rustle.