I am your ancestor. You know next-to-nothing
about me.
There is no reason for you to imagine
the rooms I occupied or my heavy hair.

To start with, it looked abstract
                                                 that first year from the balcony

Fever and ooze, fever and ooze: 
Pronoun by pronoun, verb by irregular verb, 
Winter grows great with spring: March: 

Power rigs drift like lights out past the breakwater,
                                               white, and fluorescent white.
The sea moving them up and down

June is a migraine above the eyes,
Strict auras and yellow blots,
                                                green screen and tunnel vision,

Sundown smoke like a pink snood
                                        over the gathered hair of the mountains,
The sun a garish hatpin

Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix 
And mismatch,
                                   and settle about our lawn furniture, like air

Piece by small piece the world falls away from us like spores
From a milkweed pod,

Friday arrives with all its attendant ecstasies.
Mirrors bloom in the hushed beds.

The ocotillo begins to publish its orange tongues

Saturday. Early afternoon. High
Spring light through new green,
                                                    a language, it seems, I have forgotten,