-a nightmarish morning at Pauline’s house and the images in the leaves-

mid-evening at my aunt's house and in bed there, headboard at the window,
first floor but overlooking dusty Way Street and a few ill-tempered goats
short-chained in the sickly meadow, chewing on the meadow, eating it.

but these goats, they belonged to a neighbor of Aunt Pauline,
an old Portuguese man who kept road-roaming chickens as well as goats.
beyond the meadow approaching the junkyard but on this side of the fence,

stood a big tree with a full head of August leaves standing near the streetlight.

Inside and across the thickness of the leaves, images could be found

if one was so inclined as to find them and identify them.

from the open, narrow bedroom window, I began sifting through
the dense foliage with squinting eyes, drawing from the light
and shaded areas, mapping images in there,––

many, many images of Jesus in there, some of them upside-down,
scattered like candlepins at the "Walco Bowl-Away",–– so many it seemed
that I could bat a bushel of messiahs from the tree like so many sour apples
if I had the tenacity to escape Pauline's house and do such a thing.

I wanted to see Dagmar in the tree, or a horse, or Eisenhower.
but with heightened observation into the images in the leaves
I found what it was that would haunt me through the dark night ahead,––
the terrible face of the horrible maniac!
(looked a lot like Uncle Octavio, sharp, bald-headed and goo-goo eyed.)

In the morning, Aunt Pauline served-up a runny soft-boiled egg
spooned across a slice of tepid toast and a glass of warm milk with two
tablespoons of sticky molasses stirred in for my breakfast prolonging the nightmare.