Friday, June 5, 2020

soda, salt, sand






 
tell me, aren't you already exhaling when 
the thing's that's said to take
your breath away takes your breath
away?  Isn't what was in the lung being
pushed through your chimney: 

the flue of your throat and crown
of your mouth, the cap of your nose?
Alvaro kept the ladder against
the house if in case the brick lit
flittingly the dormant creosote greasy 

as cheese, jagged as half-rotted
teeth, imagine coming from the bottom
up, the chain banging the bucket
of sand, the pocket of damp rag
filled with salt baking soda

and to inches beside the jeopardized
shingles and trusses and if it comes
straight in without asking, though
in some backward hindsight invited
when the match's struck and when

the bellow's squeezed and poking full
open in the face maybe those bats
come to roost there.  who's not had his 
chimney up and running all summer but come
the first frost, come the crops all bedded,
come her fall on the cold mud road
walking home and no shoulder
to heave to and soon she's legitimately
ill. And her breath legitimately taken 
off as like in hod after hod of shingles 

they'll need before what? full-on winter?  wait
until spring?  situate to the kitchen 
and only two other rooms beside?  what 
of falling and keeping it secret, like creosote 
stitched stalactite thick in the brick 

and then the sucker-punch and double
over what's broken off and what's about to
bloom beyond smoke...couldn't it be 
true that what's ugly or what's about to
throw roses from the roof stuns just as

much and there's just as much force
that draws us off and on through?
?
Is it the same force as beauty seducing 
to see what's covered set free? 





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Just So

Just So     Of course I knew those leaves were birds.                                       Christian Wiman                     ...