I spent what light Saturday sent sweating And learned to cuss cutting grass for women Kind enough to say they couldn’t tell the damned Difference between their mowed lawns And their vacuumed carpets just before Handing over a five-dollar bill rolled tighter Than a joint and asking me in to change A few light bulbs. I called those women old Because they wouldn’t move out of a chair Without my help or walk without a hand At the base of their backs. I called them Old, and they must have been; they’re all dead Now, dead and in the earth I once tended. The loneliest people have the earth to love And not one friend their own age—only Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss Them around, women they want to please And pray for the chance to say please to. I don’t do that kind of work anymore. My job Is to look at the childhood I hated and say I once had something to do with my hands.
Copyright © 2010 by Jericho Brown. Used by permission of the author.
A man staring at a small lake sees His father cast light line out over The willows. He's forgotten his Father has been dead for two years And the lake is where a blue fog Rolls, and the sky could be, if it Were black or blue or white, The backdrop of all attention. He wades out to join the father, Following where the good strikes Seem to lead. It's cold. The shape Breath takes on a cold day is like Anything else — a rise on a small lake, The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub — A shape already inside a shape, Two songs, two breaths on the water.
From Us, by Ralph Burns, published by Cleveland State University Press. Copyright © 1983. All rights reserved. Used with permission.