The living room was the corner of the house.
After being exposed to magazine air for many years,
the easy chair hardened:
leather transmuted into granite.
In front of the stone chair is a TV table
piled with Yankee candles
stacked one on top of the other.
They're in the bleachers watching hockey,
and the numbers and geometry here
imply an expected donation
to the Church of Meadow Showers or Wedding Day.
Wicks tall and still above the radiator -
there is far too much wax surrounding them
for these votives to be holy.
Now granite is transmuted into stainless steel,
and parchment paper from the kitchen
is rolled in across the floor
to cover the newly medical piece of furniture.
A hand-knit IV bag drips saline solution
onto a pile of smooth newspapers.
Ducks swim across the four vertical ponds that define the room,
moving in concentric circles around cattails sprouting from
the points of antlers floating perpendicular to the water.
Finally the steel gives way to beautiful pine,
endlessly sanded and varnished.
All of a sudden, a hole opens up in the floor and swallows the man.
The TV is still on.
"Here's the kicker: "
(says the weatherman)
"When you finally recline after everything,
when you are supine for the last time,
after the last parallel parking job,
the last stubbed toe,
the last love affair,
someone else lays your
weary, empty head onto the pillow.
You don't even get to feel it happen.
It's going to be sunny tomorrow."