Listening to See

I will live without doors or windows only eggshell walls. Someone will play a piccolo outside. I will hold my ear against the wall and think of winter white trees frozen water where I long to glide. A noose of gardenias grows from the cracked ceiling. 1968 long before I was born another dead uncle. The smoke house will be torn down. My grandmother will look away as the boy with the wild hair rests. Will I become that boy? I have let my hair grow into copper smoke a nightmare in each swirl. The world for me is frightening. White cats in barren oaks stare with Plutonian eyes. We are all mutilated. Scars are valleys we must scale. Unlike for James    Vietnam is a place I will discover temples wrapped in rubber trees monks with shaven heads humming. I will keep the vines from coiling about me. I imagine the rusted roof on that gray house the pungent hickory gone and no swaying body. There on the almost floor I see a faceless woman dressed in white. She is drawing long crooked roads with her fingers. This time someone will live.