From The Good Life, published in April 2002 by Nightwood Editions.

Today after rain

the streets are bare

and smell only of dust.

The service station is broken

and the cars sleep like bodies of beetles

pinned in line by the careful

hand of an entomologist.

The sky opens like a cabinet

and inside there is blue

but then quickly

clouds move and the door

slams shut. A collapse

of black on the ground

and down each street

there is no sound

or movement at all.

Somewhere this is art.

Somewhere a place like this

opens and an eye peers in.

Somewhere this is a collection

worth polishing. A little red mailbox.

The corner grocer. Streets and gutter grates.

Somewhere what matters matters,

the sky opens and the world is unique,

people come out and the neighbourhood

insinuates itself into the present and past.

For a moment it lasts.

For a moment we are common.

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