Abandon Cake


My virus was surely a godsend. 
I had to cancel a few things 
and slow down a bit and pay

attention to my breathing and read 
a new translation of The Inferno.
In English, terza rima can elicit

flowery convolutions even on the path 
to a pond full of shit, but what
better godsend than a fecal lake.

In the park where I walk,
a man sleeps below a picnic table 
while the snow swirls and drifts.

My dog pulls toward him.
and I imagine waking to strange dogs’
teeth and breath and to odd people,

curious or tender or hostile. He pulls 
a tousled head from his sleeping bag 
as I pass. I abandon Dante’s three

layer cake and picture the cosmos
as a woman dropping occasional notes 
into my mailbox. I miss some and fail

to respond to others, but the mail keeps 
coming. She’s a patient correspondent 
and I’m a terribly small part of her,
 
the tenant with bad wiring in apartment 
5,000,089,322 C
and my rent is late. Maybe

Dante was right about hell,
its symmetry, the desperation and greed 
underlying everything. Of course,

his lines hung in the air
I was breathing before my first 
cloyed translation arrived,

a godsend, in the mail.