Pandora's Inheritance

In a strange way the light illumines
the whites of her eyes, the smiles
and happy balloons, floating away
into an overexposed collodion sky.
High clouds are knife-spread too thin
across the crimson-crusted morning.
The backyard is a frowning garden,
all monochrome and mildewed;
the birdbath brims with maple leaves
and black frozen water; a drunken
wheelbarrow slumbers and rots
amid shadows and unmown grass;
but dawn is fresh upon the hard mud
and fragments of plastic playthings,
little smiling girls and pink-glitter horses
with broken legs; the air is clean and cold,
full of serene indifference and the scent
of chimney smoke; a withered shrine
of firewood and cinder blocks is forgotten
in the shade of a dying brown fir;
the house is locked and empty; she breathes
on her fingers, and pines for her gloves;
an icy tear falls from the aluminum awning,
and shatters upon the crumpled earth.