994

WHEAT STREWN ON A MAKESHIFT ALTAR

Too many wires on the floor indicates a mental instability
It may be unwise to witness for long. The barley sugar
Melts away and then it’s six or seven thousand pages
Before the next scenic overlook, the next happy memory
That doesn’t send you bursting the packing materials.
Growing up in these latitudes (or altitudes, I’ve lost
Track of whether it was the sun or the thin air
That was attributed with the following magic power)
We develop a taste for disappointment, but not just any
Run of the wind scattering of energies
Or missed three point shot at the buzzer. It is to this place
That the profoundest sorrows are endemic, so much so
That the crinkling eyes we show at small pleasures,
Such as, say, a child accepting a candy and therefore
Wrecking some adult’s dream of a routine performance
Of the evening’s ballot, these almost imperceptible
Signs of joy have for us the force of bombs, not the cartoon
Kind with short lines emanating from a shrinking fuse,
But the action tv kind, on the floor of a deserted barn
That seems to have lately been the scene of some ritual,
The LED counting backwards, and from the hunk of putty
Too many wires, an oil- and blood-stained newspaper on top.