Atrophy Homes
Stags from the foundry bugle the front door.
Drifts of shingle veined with chromium drainpipe
Part for the heaven-storming atrium where
Bolts from a cirro-stratus chandelier
On a timer stoke the drama of a staircase
That gyres around a ficus someone dusts.
Failing daylight cues the copper coachlights.
Well-sculpted if unlettered gapes the mailbox.
Come Christmas, braced for with a spangled spruce,
The demigods descend, luscious in fur,
Spilling gifts for caterers, the au pair,
The startled mailman. Corks and snowballs soar,
Ski boots splash the pantry, lights are switched
By rosy flesh, garage doors rise and fall,
The structure blazes like a desert casino.
Before the demigods touch back once more
Come summer, mowers call and edgers keen,
Glads already blossoming take root,
Rackets and clubs deplane, skateboards leap,
Security can relax. And here and there,
Whelmed amid the dormered embassies,
The spec palazzi and half-timbered keeps,
Heirs of the mullioned, dark, eleven-room
Pinched originals that set this pace
Way back, finding their robber baronage
Jet-setted, jettisoned and plain displaced
By its own theme, can hear their deadliest
Epithets -- Conspicuous Nonconsumption,
Insider Trader Vernacular, Geek Revival --
Die among poodled shrubs as if among
Aisles of an unpopular museum,
Its rotely dusted racks of inscribed cups,
Its bodiless pronghorn gazing with glass eyes.
(published in The Geography of Hope: Poets ofColorado’s Western Slope)
