Sale

Older now, he is among us in diminished form,

clothes sagging, hat large on the fine head

He likes the largest stores             acres of socks and tuna             where

                   high girders look down on him also                        who

                                       pushes his cart and leans on it a little

      . . . something sacramental about the belittling

perspective          something

                   heroic about the high shadows in the niches

                                       of the corrugated roof

                                                                               beneath which

                                                            under spotlights that don't spread far

he moves with the people who comb through

the aisles               pulling down unwieldy

                   batches of single things                   to last them through

                   cold time

                                       that can't be trusted

There he is at the far end of an avenue

                                                                               of obelisks of paper

head cunningly mobile like a bird's                         eyes quick like one

                   beading on flecks that might be the

                                       morsels that it needs

                                                            or on grains                           or seeds

At this its faltering morse of chirrups                     but no long address

                   only

                                       the same few wordchains

                   at my feet

                   air down danger aieeeeeeee

But in their multitudes                                    horrific

                                       squeals

                                                          blue golden green their throats and breasts

                                       all with the herringbone

                                                          wingcaps that grind like blades

                                                                              of a thousand ceiling fans in a

                                                                                                 flaming house

After the teak forests were hewn down               plagues

                   of parakeets rippled down on the crops

                                       themselves a crop             digesting

                                                          menacing

                                                                              no longer charming and

                                                          observable

but like any swarm or heap or tumulus or

                   housing project or array of products or uncountable mass

                                       of faces even rich ones

                                                          repellant

You can almost see them in his mind

                   my father's wordchains as they click against each other

                                                                              rapidly succeeding in his mind

                                                                              without excuse

and he thinks the people at the other end are

                   idiots                        or

                                                          when things are going well

                                        just helpless

                                                                           or when they know a little fact

                                        that he does not

                                                          (that beating flour too fine will mean the gluten

                                                                                  cancels out the baking soda and the rolls

                                                                                                 won't rise

                   well          then         that they are smart

                                                                           as whips

Eyes almost black behind his glasses                         shining

                   before the freezer cases of brightly packaged

                                                          dinners with too much

                                        sodium and fat

                                                          rounds of chicken                           steaming

                                                                               like eager faces against the costly frost

he flies up into the highest branches

                                                          of the possible air                            and then goes still

                   at everything spread down there          for sale