Today's poem is by Doug Ramspeck

That Summer
       

when the mercenaries came to live with us
they made beds of muddy grass & vulture feathers

& contagion       & they made windchimes out
of knucklebones       & their songs said

if tongues are broken off at the root
we will bury them like bulbs

& one morning they found a child hiding
in the field & tossed him down the well

where he lay until the water tasted bitterly
of dreaming       & the mercenaries said

here is our summer tenderness       & by day
we washed the mercenaries'clothes

& entertained them with stories of the gods
hanging by their feet near the river

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Copyright © 2023 Doug Ramspeck All rights reserved
from Boulevard
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission