Paramount

by M.N. O'Brien

Do you smell the wood burning from the Halcyon
years? I swear the embers still glow under the gray.
Now I need another picture to use the leftover words.

Pass me another photograph of Marlene Dietrich,
the one with butterfly lighting, as if she was looking
up through floorboards, the shine cracking through.

Can we go soon? I'm getting older and rationality
seems unreasonable. It's paramount, like Washington,
the grommet, graceful tumbleweed, and swift fates.

If I collapse, you'll go upstairs and eat eggs without me.
I don't want that to happen later, but I'm talking before
we leave, and the view has yet to manifest on highways.

Where's the photograph, in the fireplace? I know films
with those scenes. The photograph curls up burning,
the camera zooms in on the black and white smiles.