Sweeping

Sweeping

Only brooms

Know the devil

Still exhists,

That the snow grows whiter

After a crow has flown over it…

                                                Charles Simic

                                                Brooms

Maybe sweeping  becomes innate

when heaping the random bits and blow-

ins make the way as safe coming

as they do going.  It’s how

you welcome a guest, by the pristine

boarders you keep, these and your

crisp invitations:

see the lines are straight and safe

to my door and to the warm

way in.  It takes years

of practice.  Of heaving off detritus.

Of watching for the snow you’ll event-

ually shove off, all those flakes that fall, fall, fall

all winter gathering just to take

themselves into the melt of spring

to make monuments for the sky who has

offered so liberally of herself,

and to shape them like they are understood

all along, even, especially, as they melt

away,  the way a bear melts

into her woods, or a bird into her branches

each of  their coming in and going out

driven by appetite

or fatigue, tongue or loin,

beneath this sky and alongside

a quiet eye, without deciding what all

it will become as it is met

and swept off, a shovel or blade or broom

straw, the way known before the hand

takes up with the handle

with the strictest of confidences

and not a word, not a single word,

except maybe shhhh, shhhh, shhhh,

shhh, shhh, shhh;             shhh, shhh,

shhh      hhh,                              hh,   h

the terms

the terms

The colonel praised the use of moderate electric shock.

Charles Simic

because finally

I purged myself

of the think:

I want you

again and deserve

what you do

to me again and again,

I open you long

after I’ve shut you

off as if on this

day

you’re a faucet you’re

a hot and cold mixing

valve finally fixed when

I chipped away 

the crumble

of the once

 adhering

corner on corner

spaces 

and reached between

the two

that needed

replacing

the two

I had

finally

(although this was later)

s  m  a  s  he  d

to get at you

I can’t say how

simple it was

to finally figure

I didn’t need

to stand

shivering in

the mist and trickle

of the shower

and quicken my invisible

splinters

(spinsters you'd call them)

the way I always

did that it was

it really was

a simple repair

and depending

on whose brand

I needed behind

it all

I can get off

with not having

to spend a week’s

pay to watch

some cliché

plumber come in

and diagnose me

as easy

as shit

I can do it all

myself, twist

consistently one way

to take it

out and the other

way to put it

right again.  Now

the crack

in the tile is mine

and depending on

the way the steam

rises

can be

a smile

can be

a wink

and if I join it

with the others

I didn’t put there

intentionally

I can

make

it

out

still

wet

and still

alive

Tell Me What is the Door to Purgatory Made Of But Your Own Belief?

Tell Me What is the Door to Purgatory Made Of But Your Own

Belief?

Help me to find what I’ve lost,

If it was ever, however briefly, mine,

You who may have found it.

                 Charles Simic

                       Mystics

Days it’s just letters the way letters loop

you know together and make words making

sense and maybe even praying  and pages

of them slide like they’re on someone’s lap

clasped by a hand a couple of fingers

a fist and the world’s coming on and going

by and wants for nothing not ever not even

needing to be seen even though look at me

here taking it all down by shape and time

and hue and heat (or not, of any of them)

of day and making it make happy or sad

or love or hate but who’s paying

attention listen I’ve gone over all the lines

all these times and brought them up like

a child is brought up from the bottom from

the very bottom of their bottom which isn’t

my bottom and can’t be and we situate even

so don’t we the way if you think on it like this

clouds begin by being drawn up and taken

to be changed and blown across the front

of us and the back of us and if they could right

straight through us and finally (briefly) set on down

in a foreign place who’s paying pray attention

round as their eyeball is or hard as

the very center of their hand when it opens

finally and the knot that’s been pearled there

is small and it’s rubbed by a thumb or a tooth

and tongue and is called to surrender to

if a thief ok a thief or a dismisser ok

a dismisser or believer ok a believer

to all whoever can take every feather

of every bird and give them their just indulgences.