"...the only
light is owed to the faultiness
of wood."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
Roseland
In the snow, we can’t see
the oncoming dark and light,
so children are late getting home
for retrieving their flattened
pennies from the track,
rubbing their thumbs
where the grooves of a face
used to be. The basement
window bottle glass
was taken by someone’s
hammering need,
and the trains spark over
the continuous dull green
bits. Now there are nailed-
down boards covering
any shadow, and the only
light is owed to the faultiness
of wood. It’s now that we force
the frozen earth to yield its hoard
of wheatbacks, buried in June,
and carry them in paper bags
to board the ten a.m.
We think of them
as beginning here, in our hand,
and then, by our hand,
scattering out into the world.
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