Crenellations

I believe in being selfish.

—Francis Bacon

A lapwing squeaks from the privet hedge, signaling retirement.

Wish list: castle in Riberac with limestone gates, thatches of grapes

crowding a dovecote, this wistful fullness lit by the countryside’s

hay reflecting gold, the sun’s mirror held in repose by rows

of green glass bottles stacked in the garden’s forgotten corner.

A kitchen seemingly birthed from bread, its trefoil-stamped tiles

like wheat. Harpocrates might perch here on a stool to sip Bordeaux

with venison and country olives soaked in bay and herbal brine.

A view through sage smoke down a stucco hallway to a door ajar:

oaken floors like rawhide blocks, luminous linen in sunny piles

on a Tatami bed. An amphetamine voice like Noël Coward’s—

O God there’s cum in your hair. No, just biscuit gravy, dear…

Or regard Cimabue whose cynosure regressed, his Crucifix censured

by the ’66 flood that redacted the oils’ rich shades, leathery incarnadine.

Such apprenticed skill elevated his line to contour the Messiah’s tunic

in crimson fuzz, a fitness of umber reincarnated by conservators. Hardly.

This is a more achievable remnant—naturally disastrous life, 

inadequate repair by unknown hands.