Smoke Day
There’s a saying about time when everything is on fire.
The morning entirely blue except one pink slash right where it all starts up.
Leaf-blower, highway drone.
Come come to my cottage and thou shall be free, John Clare said to the robin.
Here’s an hour with no one in it, a schedule of pink flowers cut in a vase.
Everything pretending it will last.
Was it ever so open, so pure, the world.
There’s a saying about the end, a saying about the sun, a drop of blood.
One morning Clare stood on the threshold, peered close at the green grassy earth.
Waited for them to take him away.
And why I am shut up I dont know.
There are no words for that smoky wind in the cedar, but I heard.
O make me a passage and think me not bold, said the robin to Clare.
A plea to be with, to be spared from.
There’s a saying about the crushed earth, or the sky falling in.
A way in where none exists.
Little wings rustling at the sill.
Yarrow and the starry aster gone brown.
Shut out are the green fields and the birds in the bushes
To nestle in the palm, fed bits of crumbled bread.
I’ve forgotten how it goes.