1.
I remember going door to door, it must
have been nineteen
thirty-six and half the town was out of work,
we always had the Red Cross drive in March
(consider
the lilies how they grow). The snowmelt
frozen hard again, and cinders on the shoveled
walks.
I was wearing your grandmother’s boots.
(Consider the ravens, they have neither storehouse
nor barn.)
The grocer gave a nickel, I can see him yet,
some people had nothing at all.
And I came
to Mrs. Exner’s house (no thief
approacheth, neither moth). The woman
was so bent
with arthritis, nearly hooped
when she walked up the street with her bucket and mop
(not Solomon
in all his glory). The people
she cleaned for wouldn’t keep a bucket in the house
(nor
moth). She gave me three new dollar
bills, I’ll never forget it. I wanted the earth
to swallow me up.
2.
Oilcloth on the kitchen table, linoleum
under his chair, and both of them an ugly hiero-
glyphic
of yellow scorchmarks ringed with black.
My father must be tired, to let the ash
between
his fingers and the still-lit butt-ends of his
days befoul the world around him so. Bone-
tired
and all but hammered to his knees
with drink. (Burnt offering I have not required.)
The morning after
the night he died (the undertaker’s taillights
on the snow-packed drive), my mother sat just
there
(burnt offering I will not have) and said
(but only love), I’m going to get a new kitchen floor.
3.
The raven is not
an unmixed consolation. What is manna
to the raven leaves a crust of blood
above
its beak (a treasure which no moth
corrupts). The freckled lily festers. The unspotted
lily drops
its trembling stamen in a smear of gold
(laid up for thee). And still it is no little
thing
to think we shall be eaten clean.