Me and Sweet Fanny Adams

I spread a square blanket
on the bald-patched lawn,
a four-cornered island of plaid.

I try to smother
the Saturday soundtrack
of lawn-mower opera,

by singing a mystical song.
My silver friend is flat;
flatly, she drones along.

A small picnic, for me
and Sweet Fanny Adams,
who obligingly never eats much.

It is Sweet Fanny Adams,
or mum's feather duster,
or father, and lectures on Chaucer.

It is fair, to share,
even with an airy girl.
Everything is better out of doors.

Two sandwiches, cut
from corner to corner;
triangles, four, seeping yellow;

four sandy beige cookies,
but I take Sweet Fan's,
while she is translating the sky.

The buffalo grass
etches marks on my thighs
rubbing through the rug,

but nothing is written
on Sweet Fanny Adams;
I made her finer than me.

All her spectrum and prism
and theorem and dictum;
my sole face is trying hard

at the hollow blue dome,
with its traces of vapour,
dead white, and unreal.