Shift #5
for Seamus Heaney
a box of coconut water
two cans of coconut milk
so many looking for help
some people care when a poet dies
a poem is a conscience
a report card, a confession:
today my lies were a motor that spun the Earth
how can you get truth from a hill
when I am the continent that drifts?
how can I taste what I’m mourning
when soon everything will be salt from the sea?
—8/30/13, Register 6
1 PM—5:15 p.m.
Copyright @ 2014 by Ali Liebegott. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on May 6, 2014.