Pipes
Maybe you stop counting the people who hate you.
Think of the desk of you father’s papers.
He was 34. He drew out a plan for his son,
But not for his daughter.
Think of your sister now.
She rides on your shoulder like a heavy pack.
Let it down and the bears eat her.
Think of ground level windows.
Don’t think about them, stay awake worrying about them.
Worry about the night. It hits you
Like a grey storm of water and wind.
It makes Sundays ache and empty,
It makes 18 years turn to 22, 22 to 30.
30 then stretches to death and mortgages.
The grass never grew thick and green
Despite the white bead powder sprinkled each spring.
Each dumb kid rose and fell and whimpered away
In unfelt anxiety, grey mornings, silent nights.
The last field went away. The cars drove past.
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Before the war Ivan would walk down the stream
ReplyDeleteWhere there grew a willow, no one knew whose.
No one knew why it loomed over the stream;
No one knew this was Ivan's willow tree.
In his canopied raincoat, killed in combat,
Ivan came back to his willow's shade.
Ivan's willow,
Ivan's willow,
Like a white boat, it floats downstream.