Listening to Graceland

Each change leaves the vinyl siding
of heart pockmarked.
Varnish gone, tiny holes show
the woodwork and pink insulation beneath.

The hail reigns from the dark clouded hippocampus
- a nickelodeon film (complete with cigarette burns) of
sepia toned images swell and join the high and low
pressure systems. They're careless in their storm's birth.
Freezing but not quite frozen. Solid little white balls descend
into the house I built. The house she helped design with
her little hands.

Those little hands they haven't stopped holding
onto my big beige, knuckle cracked paws.
Not yet.
But death or shattered shadowed window panes loom.
Autumnal hymns sway singing dirges through the
brown leafed breeze. Her words are left without shelter-
Her worth forever beheld behind the pockmarked vinyl.