My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare

It’s common to live properly, to pretend

you don’t feel heat or grief: wave nightly

at Miss Fugue and Mister Goggles before diving

into your nightcap, before reading yourself

a bedtime story or watching your beloved sink

to the bottom of a lake and noting his absence

in your log. The next day you drop his clothes off

at Goodwill like a sack of mail from a warplane

then hobble back to your hovel like a knight moving

only in Ls. It is comfortable to be alive this way,

especially now, but it makes you so vulnerable to shock — 

you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove<