He demanded that it be hot
& to that end I went scurrying; the place I’m referring to

got cold, come Fall, & all you could do (adobe walls,
one-hundred foot ceilings) was procure to

plug in. Days were spent ferrying
apparatuses I ran to ground (local quincallas) room to room,

I behind him, on my knees, wondering
how much longer could he take it without dying

outright: the freeze then the heat: he neon:
at night he hunkered down (Andes of blankets)

lamenting the exodus we’d made from the land of palms
he’d ended up in after his earlier woes:

it was complex in the extreme to be trying
to tie his two themes into a knot we could live with:

times had not only changed.
I manage to unhear him

a lot by dint of simplicities: humming, or claiming the phone;
& then I’ll pretend, observing him shivering, his waxy hands

ensconced in garden gloves (lissom violets, background mauve),
his skull behunched, remembering,

that we are on a beach again, simultaneous, burnt to a crisp,
at the end of what often passed

for a perfect day