Poem for today

What were my hands dirty with?
I would sit in my grey office chair
with no vocation, just elaborate plans to burn
all these matches in an end-to-end
world record trick like that of an S
of gunpowder a cartoon character
wouldn’t know about, but he would know.
He would be ready. It would begin
at the foot of our parents’ canopy bed,
which was docked for the duration
of the day, and cascade downstairs
to the befuddlement of the dogs.
Each domino would be a spoken word
and according to the rules of that game
only matching words or rather quantities
would count, and so it was good each
point of transfer was the same blue flare
linking the links, the match heads words
as unremarkable as they were crucial.
To the completion of the trick, anyway.
It snaked around the upright arsenal
of BB guns and duck calls, also
stored upright like a bass band’s instruments,
and under the feet of the table
where we had built labyrinths and forts,
which are historically related. Clacking
lines of fire under the dry Christmas tree,
I would lay under it staring at the pine-gold
boughs and bunting, which receded from me
and tapered in the manner of a vortex.
But that was always a rather solitary job.
I’d resolve to not do it anymore as the plan led
around the yucca he’d hide behind,
back downstairs — I’d be sweating, thinking
of these exertions, this search, the carpet
crisscrossed with precise black lines I would repair
much later, maybe, if I cared and if
the trick was successful. I had planned
to find him in his basement room, the fuse
at the jamb waiting patiently to advance,
and when he asked with an adult’s scorn
what I thought I was doing I’d indicate him
with a flourish and say the most astonishing thing.



Cpyrght 2006 W.M. Lobko