by James Sands
This is a poem: My wood box in the basement is full;
out here in the margins where I have always lived my life,
this is a poem of the mind, an idea that exists outside
the currents and confines carrying contemporary design;
it is a lonely life, my poem, written in fits and snatches
strokes of a maul, splits and stacks from reverberations
down the handle of an axe, words hewn from a keyboard,
and metaphors pertaining to no one is here anymore;
my wood box in the basement is full, and I will stay warm
for awhile or the winter, and there is no more space
in the second freezer, overgrown with a garden of summer,
and a longing for sunshine on late August tomatoes, now
boiled tight into mason jars on basement shelves that are full;
all of this is a poem, an unnatural poem in its natural form
designed to feed the body, the soul, and the mind with elements
of the earth, and the influence of solitude, and the needs of a wood box.
photo credit: Andrea Govia, Unsplash
Farmer-ish 