Sourceless Ventilation* Poem by Bernard Henrie

A summer day so calm a child's toy
could not be blown across a lake.

I'm at loose ends
and I've seen the last of you.

Your towel drying
on the back of an overstuffed chair,
a dozen artifacts lying on their side
among flatware and a milk jug,
the deaf corners of the house,
the bin where the horse stores his grain.

I regret the slur of similar days,
the slur of wavering night hours.

And now the halogen bloom of summer;
the blond apparition of summer
basking across metal roofs and animals
disemboweled in a marketplace.


*David Foster Wallace