A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLUE STRIPED SHEETS

You bought them the first week
after the divorce. Standing in line
at a now defunct department store,
you took a lesson in scaling back--
a cheap coffee pot in one hand,
twin sheets nesting
in the crook of an arm. Strange
how you remember it all so clearly--
those first nights lying on blue stripes
with your books scattered across the bed;
a sharp corner of Mme. Bovary
waking you with a jab to the ribs...
Now, nearly twenty years later,
you pull the blue striped sheets
from the back of a closet and use them
to haul leaves into the woods;
the polychrome colors of a new autumn
mix with old stains: blood,
a starry splotch of paint that brightened
a succession of rented lives. Of course,
there were lovers, too--
mostly forgettable--but one caught forever
in stripes of sunlit blue and white.
Now his memory mixes with the smell of earth,
with leaves so bright with death
you stand breathless in the woods
and watch them fall.