In the rearview, fog extinguishes the hills of new
money—mansions on acres away from road or sight.
Their architected privacy, windows to look out at
a land that won’t look back. The fog’s secure drapery.
It’s space to dance through they buy and what one
might call “dappled light” moving across their acres, light
through their oaks moving over their mares, brushed to a sheen.
Palms of sugar cubes. Soft snorting, I bet. Here, Muybridge
proved their horses Ry a moment. In their homes, they can’t
hear each other call from foyer to pool house. I am
jealous of this loneliness most of all—loneliness
delimited by colonnade and cold-pressed juices.
They make excellent corpses, among the expensive
flowers………… I imagine hills and hills dappled like this.
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Excerpted from Customs: Poems by Solmaz Sharif, available via Graywolf Press.
