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My Last Bad Check 

Mark McCloughan

Again another house, walls
sienna and Italian blue. I keep
awaking in strange new rooms.

Through a plain
arch, the mitered sky, veiled
too. I turn my eyes,

search for the sun, wanting
more warmth, craving food
of light, long strands of it

slipping among my dirt-
colored hair, settling the fields
of my browning skin.

I feel the absent roof, taken
off somewhere, rich red
tile and gentle slope

floating over a square
field or an orchard,
the shade a form of starvation.

What sits beneath it thins
out, grows frail, waits for water,
waits, like me, for light, for its lover.