Several level-headed Napoleons,

their eyes all lowered and glazed,

a hinge in every eyelid opened to

a fatalistic gaze.

x

The imprint their pool made when they took it,

sandy and nonrenewable,

a yellow stage between

a thousand years of decaying leaves.

They warp like the ashy walls of the bathroom,

bored and complacent,

she locked herself in.

x

In the backyard the

god in stone, with his

dirty, cement bones,

but every human failing could not account for the damage.

Bronzed earth and

cinnamon, with

wings too thick to fly.

x

The ebony ghost of a dog,

running tracks around the house.

Brutish and nervous,

he comes to a loving halt,

lovingly chained to every tree.

But her nails chip brown paint off the door,

as her star spangled polish becomes dust.

x

But no more now.

A light, fragrant chill hangs in the air

and the jaundiced sun subdues it's glare

and even the yellowed petals speak

of its brightest hour.

They become choppy and two dimensional,

a tribute to its own history.

x

My mother scrapes the leaves

and wraps them, bloody, catholic artifacts.

They become every other house.

And the man, twice her size

who wanted every cent, contractors

to set plastic beams in the Grove.

x

A God in stone

in a gold laden wood.

He said that

I am free to move past the holly now,

but they drove away and broke down somewhere else.