Under a blue blanket
I taste a breath
like sweet mandolins

rolling over
like some great green wave

out on the grounds
they plucked
plebby-skinned mandarins  

untouched by noon,
stepping gingerly
over the soft roots in the grove
with garbled syntax
worried about a tax on sin
plucking all the grays
from their skulls

untouched by night
plonked in a bed
never dreaming
but sometimes
wishing to be a bed,
or a wardrobe  
or an old chandelier
or dead.