I live in this pickle barrel and listen to the gossip.
But right now - just before this, really - I am watching a bit of ash
fall to the floor. I was watching it. So I must be outside
the pickle barrel and must have been I was back then too.

This ash fell in a room, through the air
of a room. Don't trust the gossip to continue in front of a stranger,
and one who admires the cooper's art inside out only at that.
These are those who feel they must make heads or

tails out of the this and that in my room.
A second skin of gauzy preciousness is draped over,
like the plastic slips of my youth. This is all they see in the world
of the pickle barrel, not in the barrel, but only of

the world. "We are all plastic, everything is plastic - look,"
he says tapping his wrinkles, tapping everywhere,
doing the the atoms of the table are no different thing
but in what he assumes is a new way which still doesn't infuse it

and anyway the gossipers see through it right away. It was just
a conversation he remembers as he watches an ash fall to the floor,
he watched an ash fall to the floor

one day as summer turned to fall,
when summer turned to fall,
it is turning to fall right now,
falling right now.