LITTLE WINDS

1 0 0 Y L I T T L E W I N D S A D A M G I A N N E L L I for Benedict Egan, 1918–2013 The cars on Sunrise reduce to headlights. Above the King Kullen the stars resume their old staring contest. ≤ Residence turned to reticence. ≤ In 1974 you published The Four C’s of . . . Outdoor Advertising. I wonder about the ellipsis. ≤ Copy – In your old age the mailbox became for you an event. ≤ I shall conclude, you wrote at the end of a letter. 1 0 1 R The archaism was not meant to be prophetic but ambitious. You never went to college. ≤ In your letters too, ellipses rise like midges. ≤ Coverage – Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Lüchow’s at Christmas, the Rockville Links (you were their first Catholic), Montauk lighthouse, the house on Roxen Road where the third step from the bottom of the staircase would sound the alarm. ≤ All these years I was hesitant to break away from the coals, and now the coals have broken from me. ≤ At the liquor store we get boxes to 1 0 2 Y disembowel the rooms. ≤ Circulation – Because of heavy snow, my mother’s flight landed in Allentown. As she traveled by taxi to the hospital, you kept coursing. ≤ The candles on a cake reflect in your glasses. In each photo a flame of one sort or another lilts – and your image is the irreparable ash. ≤ The leaves in the grass bend into little boats – The elms are black easels. ≤ Continuity – I think your punctuation, a star field of dots, dashes, is because of the billboards – anything to stand out 1 0 3 R against a white facade to speeding passersby. – This rage I know. ≤ Even your pamphlet, with those dashes, ends in a wreath – to i-m-p-e-l and s-e-l-l. ≤ We wait on the sod for the bagpipes, since you had ordered them for your eldest son, and for your wife. ...