In Light of Recent Developments
       

We are not thinking of the president
              tonight. Even now, there is a maze cut into a cornfield

                            not far from here.
The leaves pile up and we wait on the porch,

                            we are waiting for the leaves
              to self-combust and enter the air, the atmosphere, our lungs.

It's easy to mistake
              dust for smoke. It's easy to think of William Blake while the sun

burns a hole in my eyes. There is a certain labor I see in the sun,
              a type of hard work someone once

                            warned me against—as if hard work and sweat
could wipe one from the face of the earth. Thinking
                                          of salt pork and a bridge

              fit for only one car at a time. A detailed aftermath.
                            An aftermath usually is. Memory,
                                      like Blake, seems to change.

When I think of nature, nature thinks back.
                        Or nature blinks back. The man with a stroller
filled with aluminum cans is now coming back up the street

                            with a wheelbarrow. If that is what
              he had been saving for,
I wish I had carried a bag of cans out to him. I once thought

              expecting the worst was the best I could do.

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Copyright © 2012 Adam Clay All rights reserved
from A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World
Milkweed Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission