Brilliant Afternoons

It, the brain, locked in its strange

Dual citizenship, lacks

The very thing it alone

Possesses. But never mind.

The light is warm on the green

Of the lives around the bay.

Two teenagers are singing

In a sunny, high-ceilinged

Bedroom with open windows,

And it, the brain, locked in then

Extending almost to now,

Conflates the Pacific green

Of the bay with the desert

Pale sandstone of the bedroom,

Possessed by the very words

It lacks to connect the scenes.

Once there was a brilliant day.

The teenagers stop singing.