No milk delivered
            to the back door,

no honeysuckle along the fence,
            no voluptuous garden

of poodles with peach fur,
            no cathedral of junk

decisions to bring us to our knees,
            no forgiveness needed,

just well-executed
            bridge parties and tennis dates,

rafts dazzling a lake.
            No going to bed before popsicles,

reduced to wood.
            We were blue

between day and night—
            birds crazed on juice,

admiring every girl named Candy.
            Candy. Make me a casket        

of the stuff spun to a cloud,
            not from the wood-sided

station wagon you died in,
            that one traveling nowhere from

the garage, blacking out
            what we knew of afternoon,

indistinguishable
            from what’s left of night

and who. We are beauties deep
            connected as family is.

Our hair, our eyes, two generations
            between us, fire

somewhere unseen,
            a river of it, burning.