She lives entirely by default, let late dusk be
sufficient decision for the day. Her halt and stammer
is excellent argument alone. She sits and smokes,
she sits and smokes and waits, and later fits
the pieces of the TV hoax into an arrest—clear
proof of her gumshoe aptitude. But what would interest
even the thirty-ninth latitude
could not get a reading with her. She’s more intrigued
by transsexuals and razors under a pyramid. Fall
is for taking the Volvo to Vermont, December
for wrapped gifts and blue spruce ‘round the crib.
These rituals continue, with her patent lack
to make the connection: memory is only one red
brick on top of another red brick, back even
and face up, separate and dead level
as the cold nail of her gaze, rejecting
the contradiction she can scratch on faces.
Because for her, each sentence has a meaning
and each sentence has another meaning, just as
everything has a place and everything has two places,
as she ponders never stunned, never moved, met—
the plunge and promise of the wild bird goes
under without a splash, a gush, not one wet
spurt, without the bead of a single green word.