The
Last Bed We Buy
Should I be grateful not to find myself 
disembodied hovering high above this stark 
cake of soap, gazing down, laboring to put 
names to faces, the couple so familiar, 
side by side, palms down, still as miller 
moths displayed on pins, our salesman, 
Bill or Ted, rumpled like a morning after
motel king, reading my mind, musing on 
this pair of worn porcelain dolls 
painted in chipped shades of hesitation?  
Soft or firm versus memory foam or pillow top?  
Hypoallergenic
pipes Ted or Bill, the last thing 
I hear before we drift off spooning on a queen, 
one not too soft and not too hard, but just right, 
a satiny raft to ferry us the final stretch of river. 
Waving like Queens we float on by the last new 
roof over which we will preside, a nod of recognition 
for the last new water heater, too.  Applaud politely  
our farewell drive through the Tunnel of Trees 
one biting October afternoon in the not so distant future.
Cluck our tongues for the poor dog snoring soft 
imprecations to hips gone tender some coming
rainy April night.  Blow twin Bronx cheers, 
fat, wet, and sloppy, as we bid adieu to one last 
shameless act of televised hubris.  Grace lies 
ahead around the next oxbow, two dormice 
cupped in a leaf, rills and eddies conveying us 
to the sea on softly rolling shoulders.  
 
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