On a line by Andrew Maxwell, volume 2

"Home is the compose key."

Composition by home field advantage.

A home composed in drywall and mud.

Home is the key signature, the one I wrote on behalf of my mother. Prosody tests your tone of voice.

Today's rain is unremitting, tropical storm remnant, shag rug.

The other night a tree broke behind the shed at the edge of the field. A lingering crack, like thunder in slow mo. Replay yesterday.

A losing streak doesn't feel like a streak but a blot, a smudge, a recession. Too big to fail does not operate across a long season.

"I guess you don't have seasons there." Except the one that rains, the one whose petals fall a school bus yellow, the one of humid bricks.

An adage is not an era. An era is not ERA. ERA is most expansive if you pitch few innings. Like horsepower on a RAM truck. REM is to sleep as this engine is to past time. He said "off pool" five times, made circling motions with his hand. "Whirlpool!"

The stink was not cat but small boy.

That the gameboy has no batteries is no bar to his invention.

He's a Buddhist. He plays in the key of C. Must-C TV includes a hidden ball trick. The lost art of attention. "At least she's talking on her cell phone, not texting," my daughter says, as we stop at the light.

Red light green light and another light we've never heard of. The older boy spits water at me, pushes me in the pool. He needs attention he's not getting.

A home composed. What was calm, and who was reading?


--based on a sentence by Andrew Maxwell, in Peeping Mot, Apogee Press, 2013.