April Bernard, "The Wise Word, The Good Word"

[solaciolum]

(Still in a poetry sort of mood. My brain is very tired right now.)

The Wise Word, The Good Word
by April Bernard

Intolerable tumult in the corridor;
storm drains wad up with melon rinds while
heavy gritty drops hurl judgment
on the men who sit and sell trash.
Maple keys, reaped, are tossed to cement,
as if in Persian carpeting, while the bodega cats
adjust their own postures, so.
So the news of the rain's passing.

Many are the other places we own
yet somehow do not hold title to;
broad and cool are their polished stone floors.
Something said is snappy, something drained down the throat
cool and thin in its coursing.

Somewhere else the sky clears like an opened eye.
Color admits and then form, as ever, and a pleasing line.
It is not as if these places could not be taken by force.
Be we are contemplating a different way to speak
upon the ground that wounds so easily at the foot's passage:
Sweep, sweep the edge of your cape in the silver and green
of the unborn maple trees.