Diminuendo

He stumbled blinking into the sunrise,
belongings thudding on the dewy grass
from their bedroom window,
the light gold on the half-harvested valley.
Pajama clad and laughably grand,
he stooped stiffbacked for each
memory, dropping the last,
while the paperboy watched from his bicycle.
Half his life landed smashed
among the flowerless greens of their dying garden;
he didn't seem to notice,
engrossed in playing the music box
with the pink ballerina that twirled
he'd given her twenty years
before the marriage went bad.
He stood emptied, vague-eyed
in the remorseful golden morning.

Either the wife or the paperboy
called the cops. The pedestrians
seemed to accept him as a lawn ornament.
It was dinnertime when the cop
came, earnestly spoke to him.
Not a flicker stirred the glassy eyes,
no flinch to a quick feint,
intellect buried in cryptic
discrepancies of existence-
apparent blankness
beneath the dripping mop of hair
in the autumn drizzle.
The van came;
they lifted him in by the armpits,
and the ballerina's tinkle quietly faded
along the rainblackened freeway.