Good-bye, Gillian, Good-bye

An unseasonably hot fall.
Wasps invade his room and
spiders fatten on them,
becoming so gorged
uneaten corpses clutter
the windowsills.

Ah, the awkward exertions
of the middle-aged apprentice,
his owls all seem to bark
his opossums try to fly.

Gillian’s on the warpath,
Gillian once the passion tender.
He sold her grandmother’s silver
to buy
fishes
linoleum patch
suet for the starlings.

She’s ridiculed him to their friends
as a savage,
a slowpoke.

Her antique brooch,
amethyst set in gold,
is next.
Winter’s coming.

He pours
boiling water down the kitchen sink
to unclog the drain,
otherwise, there’s only a silence of cobwebs,
a seep of light.