What does autumn go on paying for
		with so much yellow money?

The sky burst vivid yellow. Trees fluttering
golden leaves onto sidewalks. Riches
scraped in whispers, the city

sanding off a percentage, cashing the season
before afternoon sun melted assets.
Dividends dripped, flickered

from the molten treeline, threaded with black
brush-stroked branches I followed
down toward some rushing

paramedics, one person quiet on a stretcher,
a second, in an orange down jacket,
propped against a trash can,

unconscious. Leaves kept falling, as if trees
flung gold to buy these two a room—
or, sensing anguish press

above their roots, wept what tears they could.
Two policemen watched me, looked
as if thinking, in their turn

on a smart-ass question, Why don’t you make
like a tree and leave? I let the breeze
take me, cast myself adrift.

after John Ashbery

A dirty white couch was dumped in the middle of a parking lot,
arranged catty-cornered, as though placed inside a living room.
Days later, a plastic baby gate leaned against the couch’s back.

I’m waiting next for a mahogany hexagon end-table to appear,
my dad’s black coffee in a tan mug with large black snowflakes,
a mug from a set my mom had snagged on a Mobil gas fill-up.

I’m pausing for the lunar reflection on a black Spanish-style,
station wagon-sized Packard Bell TV cabinet, its blow-out-
the-wall sound when Dad cranked “Man With the Golden Arm,”
just to see what would happen. On quieter days, the wood’s
furniture polish nosed me as I homeworked on affluent shag.

I’m eavesdropping for a maple Philco’s soft, unvarying coercion:
the TV-phono cabinet where, steady as sun and moon, my brother
played five LPs of Christmas songs, until I broke the Bakelite arm.
He hieroglyphed those surfaces—three years of committed wear.

Fresh white lines moonlight immaculate asphalt. Nothing stirs.

I’m waiting.