04-21-2023, 10:30 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-21-2023, 11:48 AM by RiverNotch.)
One summer's day, I watched a rat
scramble into the space between
our neighbor's ceiling and their roof,
panels of corrugated metal
suspended by worm-eaten beams
of hardwood over plywood sheets
perhaps came closest to the trees
its forebears here called home.
The fruits they ate, the leaves they picked
to mattress beds for their striplings,
the twigs they wove to canopy
their fillies from the scorching heat:
all these, my ancestors had seized
for little more than kindling
and now we dare to call them pests!
What hand, I wonder, comes to saw
straight through the reinforced concrete
now sprawling past this shaven hill?
What fire, from aggregate and steel,
is waiting to be lit?
scramble into the space between
our neighbor's ceiling and their roof,
panels of corrugated metal
suspended by worm-eaten beams
of hardwood over plywood sheets
perhaps came closest to the trees
its forebears here called home.
The fruits they ate, the leaves they picked
to mattress beds for their striplings,
the twigs they wove to canopy
their fillies from the scorching heat:
all these, my ancestors had seized
for little more than kindling
and now we dare to call them pests!
What hand, I wonder, comes to saw
straight through the reinforced concrete
now sprawling past this shaven hill?
What fire, from aggregate and steel,
is waiting to be lit?