William Orem











Then         


when the pupils have finished their seeing business
and the mouth has been thanked for its work



and the fingers, which fluted
many times the edges of the sheets



to correctness on the footless bed,
and fitted in like motion
pillows to their quick envelopes



are put away,



and the days and their corresponding hours
with their qualities and colors are complete,



along with the pillows



along with the fluted sheets



along with the clothing on sure wooden racks
and the paperwork now completed;



then sit, you the still living,
the daughter the son
or the simple friend,



by one particular window
that acknowledges your shape



and hear the larks waken
to announce this,



what is come,
the first morning



of this novel season.








Canning       



Mother pressed down her finds,
finger buds squashed tight to



the disobedient lid,
keeping Spring by force



encapsuled in her heavy tin.
While from the table’s other end



Father grunted hotly at his
vegetable charge. There.



Mason Jars with creamgold tops.
Tomatoes canned, vidalias won,



another season trumped and boxed.
Triumphant they’d ascend the stair



to snore about their strange unlove.
But deeply wrapped in two a.m.



did either hear the secret,
gospel sound:



that plipping from the basement shelf
a mile beneath through winding dark,



the jars lids' hidden tap and tick
announcing from the cellar cool



the well-canned mass,
refusing to be trammeled, leaning hard



against blockading glass,
its loaded fist



outreaching, now, to form
a fatal blow to prudence,



order's wreck, new chaos come,
as all night through



I pressed my hands together
praying break, break, break?








On the next day after the wind storm    



All morning I busy myself with the things a man has
at thirty seven.
Groceries in brown paper I love
for its cool scents of Autumn,
some tea I forgot to reheat.



Yesterday’s storm cackled into our speakers,
warning, then watch, then severe.
Dire voices told tale



of men stopping cars, spreading themselves into
ditches like graves,
water the color of earthenware pots
pummeling their necks.



Now in my yard
where the grasses still tremble like girls behind notebooks,
something has been left:



a figure in pine,
leaping, extreme,
arms and legs shaped
by the branch given way.



And I think of my father, a fruitless spirit,
who labored in search
of a quiet day or two,
some verdant field where nothing changes,
no wind strikes.



Of my mother, cast about
like those people in Dante’s Hell
who chase a red flag

which is love



through through whirlwinds of frustrated air.