What if this little domestic act
became my last?
I measured walls with a retractable
metal tape,
my number two pencil drew spots for
grommets and screws,
I drilled holes for rods to music
from Burning Spear.

Would it still turn out askew,
lop-sided despite
my spirit-level and much stepping
back to examine
my slow progress? These heavy
Key West green
as in Key Lime pie colored drapes
hang in neat folds,

bar Miami’s excess light from fading
ligature and door,
velvet drapes that might line my coral
coffin if I
decided to go Miami Vice style, if
I opted for
burial at sea, if in walking the plank
as I often did

in my attempt to dance reggae at
the Happy Sailor
in Coconut Grove on Sunday nights—
more a springboard
than the plank—I’d suddenly reached
my end and tipped
forward, seawards, rolled on tiptoe,
in skis, launched off

an Olympic ramp, then pulled around me
those same aqua-
green drapes and toppled thus caparisoned,
in that reggae
dance of life, surrounded by coral, a numb,
numberless pencil,
those curtains would hang straight as a dye,
for eternity,
but not hung by me.