the heart's convexity, I consider
(in the heart's half-light)
taking the piece home with me....
are like the notions surviving
in the gaunt, brittle, half-dark
interior of an old man
and the barn an old man
lasting into this other world
maybe in a subdivision
in California: he has come out
to live with one of his children,
and runs the power mower
once a week. He actually
cuts the grass, the barn
really shelters a truck;
wearing a sportshirt,
the barn is carrying
in its inner fl ank a stack
of grease-gun cartridges.
The barn still holds the smell
of harness leather, and manure,
and feed and the like -- faint,
dry, distant, the fragrance
persists like the manner
of an earlier day in the speech
of the old man.