Plumbing

the taps run hot and cold,
scalding, frigid, by turns,
reminding one of those vastly
separate climates, the
equatorial, and the stolid,
stoic north of grey stones weeping,
the rising damp leaving a chill
in the kidneys

missing that--middle place
of simple warmth, lazing, lizard-like
on a rock, the sun, noon-high,
indiscriminate: she warms all without
marking out some reckoning to be
paid out in the end

the post is thin again today:
two begging letters, a tract, a
postcard from the pawnbroker (who
buys and sells your gold)