Quiet

The sun
Was just a white area in the sky
With a whiter center.

I contemplated the gray light switch over there.
It was far. It was arbitrary.

Call it dumb, I said, make a sound
Across the room,
Some animal ogre sound. A grunt. A killer’s mule song.
Rape the nothing wind in the
Bedroom.

It is flat. It is still.
Wait. Everything in the house exists. O my.

Eat the last of the eggs then
Throw the carton away: none of this takes very long.

I imagine the sun up in Los Angeles
Above some meadow where it is summer
And maybe a courageous man, a happy man in a plaid shirt,
Boots, bluejeans, eyeglasses
Three brass fillings in his molars and hair on the tops of his hands

And
A wallet, 1/3 full of money,
Has shot himself with a rifle in the face.

He has turned all beautiful colors:
Blue, green, yellow, purple, black.

It will take two weeks to find him and the coroner says
I’ll move to Vegas after that one.

Cooled in the light of some weird morning
He packs and leaves, walks his suitcase into the sun
And does not say goodbye to his children.

My hand moves to the light switch,
The moon is the same
And
Change it from
Where it stood. Nothing happens.