Spring Cleaning

my love, you tell me man is free,
till some prominent idiot, behind neatly
tucked, ties a knot with tarnished glove;
jilted and shamed, the girl I can see through
the mask: thus, all is relative among us now

determined to unveil my sweet life
to the dusky light of lust hadn’t I
noticed the accretion of small demands
if ably fashioned of gold or silver
it is accumulation within the mollusk

not external appearance, the way in
to the musky sweetness of memory
wasn’t there; wife, was it? wiped with a soft
sham; and the dulled space was occupied
with the even flaking of its dust

then far into the cabinet of shadows,
dill jam left on the shelf, on and on
I sat at my musty desk, high and ...
longing for a snapshot end, lest
we forget the pestilence of murmur

framing the necessary words
to fit the enclosed precious occasion
which was clearly a precocious mating
of plastic and metal, enclosed
in a disheveled protective sheet.

©2002 F.J. Bergmann

"Spring Cleaning" appeared in the WFOP Museletter #48, Summer 2005.

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