The Sears Catalogue

Because somebody’s father bought a house
sided in aluminum, blue as a robin’s egg,
and used in a through two wars, buying

plaid shins and dusky work boots, day and night
a shot and a beer. Because, as Emerson says,

“the only thing grief ha taught me is to know
how shallow it is,” Because the pages always
cud with use as though they were burning slowly.

Because you can go to town or stay at home
and you kids can go to town oc stay at home

and their kids. Because the women in their bras
peek through the window of a boy’s adolescence, giggling.
Because, and ids Emerson again, “Souls never touch

their objects.” Because somebody’s father
lists m a blue house bus can’t make himself care

for doing the lawn, for edging, for raking leaves
curbside, piling the coins of a lost Empire,
Because the sky has its suburbs, its planned

communities and empty public plazas,
its strip malls gray with buckled sidewalks;

and the sky, to, has its heavy book,
fat with the glossy photos of someone else’s dream,
blistering, sulphurous with what must come.