Finishing his prandial grub,
Wallace lies recumbent
on his saffron divan.
A minute fly gives a sort of meddling look,
like “what are You planning in that sinuous head,
Wallace ol’ boy?”
He stares at the curlicues bifurcating on the ceiling,
merging and convolving and abdicating.
He thinks, “That’s how my life’s been.”
And then thinking like that last thought was a tad bromidic, no?
A Big Red tonic, empty,
standing on his magenta-lacquered bureau
reverberates the sharp sun rays that break through
the off-white venetian blinds.
Wallace, supine for two hours by this time,
ruminates on infamous penultimate and ultimate
Last Words.
“See you tomorrow” and then “I love you.”
Some African parrot the night before the morning
the grief-spasmed owner found it
supine on its back.
The fly landed in the jamb of the
open-just-enough-for-a-bit-of-oxygen window.
It dances a sort of Greek dance,
a sort of Kalamatiano,
Wallace figures.
He recalls the Ambrose story, with the Confederate.
The soda bottle is not reflecting the rays anymore,
and the fly has eloped and Wallace is alone.
A skullcap is what he would don,
if he had to choose what his personal hat would be,
and not because it matches his quiddity or anything like that,
just that it feels right.
