Drowning I

From my last address, the dogwoods: how they hung
from April branches! Henry Adams, on that weather:
passionate depravity of the South. What can I say:
it assaulted me, in floating dust bouquets,
or vortices from air-ducts never cleaned,
or broken webs of foam torn from the air conditioner,
their pollen specks and spores loose with fragrance
from petals decomposed and pestled into air-vents
and convolutions of tubing packed in the compressor,
milled to particles that, as they dance, nearly kill me
landing on my bronchioles: fatal inspiration --
mold spores, stiff flowers twisted from broom closets,
green cuttings from hedges, weeds golden in their prime
or dander or the same old same old, in nests the hornets
weave from Sunday funnies or corsages. How many hundreds
of sentences wrapped about that pliant Saturnine ball
workers glue to eaves to prove again that form is content.
Between dust and dust lies whatever happens.
So as I rent these two bellows for lungs,
and air, their lonely explanation, I cannot own myself
anymore than crews who sailed on caravels to pass
through these branches after their jefe Columbus--
who I thought I’d expelled with a feather-duster once
or drowned with Endust, an ooze of lemon oil
dried about the corners of the coffee-table--wood
for wasps to build their gray abysses. No matter
how you re-arrange it, what’s new beneath the sun?
Answer: none of the above. The secret’s
in packaging. Rest assured I’m not the only one
who’s breathed the dust of tyrants along with their underlings.