The Power Plant

Under the copper-clad latticework of the power plant,
you were a mix of vandal and sylph and I waited
in the parking lot for hours. It was easy to vilify,

not easy to fix. In a world the color of lampposts,
it was hard to take to wife and hard to be taken
to wife, season of bureaucracy, season of gleam.

Imagine what we fled into, what the fire became:
bright red flags warning of high-voltage lines run
underground. I imagined what we would become

in the house we sat alone in. Darkness was scattered
everywhere like the hairs of a cat and I told you
a tale of nettles, of the sandman palming off his nada,

caressing your will with null. The hazards were buried
under the corruptions of autumn. Lamps were lit
underground, you said Hush now, like a mother, here

you are safe. You told me a tale, it was hard to be taken.
The sky was ash and smoke, a man made of sand.
Buried leaves became a bureaucracy, a fairyland in flames.

I was taught, in the parking lot of the power plant,
we're safe here. In the lynch force of its latticework,
you were a cross between mob and aristocrat.

Copyright © 2006 Julianne Buchsbaum All rights reserved
from A Little Night Comes
Del Sol Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission