By Tom French

Because they love him and want him to live
and know in their hearts he will leave this room
by neither window nor door, they have ordained
that the lintel that has been always there

be raised, the sill lowered and the oak frame,
fashioned to last a lifetime, be replaced
with one that runs so close to the floor that
it nearly needs a threshold, so that he,

when the bedroom wall is almost all glass,
will be able to make out among foliage
the contours of his own face and become

the thrush alighting on a night stand to glance
at hieroglyphs on a page its feet have made,
the she-fox on her night reconnaissance.