Noah

H. Shaw Cauchy

His world has shrunk like a skin too long exposed.
Morning tolls and evening is prelude to sad
rhythmic hours stiff, almost intangible
in a bed that is not homecoming.

French and German coins are wrapped in felt
in the basement. Paper sacks of eggshells
hunker near the stairs; a habit he acknowledges
has become lunatic for his wife is dead

and so are her roses. The china is muffled, sterling
buried under photo albums-- he eats from a can, washed
and drying on a towel next to the sink. For it has come

to this: one bowl, one mug, a knife and fork,
and twelve square feet of strawberries
on a sandy hill.

A poor site behind the spirea, chosen to conceal
rather than nourish. It¹s what he was given
to work with and he accepts it. Even though

he has to carry water in plastic milk jugs
every morning and evening from the spigot to brim
the rings built around each plant.

When the berries begin to ripen he covers the plot
with black net to keep the birds out. It doesn¹t keep
the birds out, and scarcely deters the ground squirrels at all,

but during harvest season he will have enough
for heavy preserves. The jars line a wall of the basement
red as hearts beating behind closed shutters.

He cultivates his strawberries like religion, or bad luck.
They will grow and bear as long as he tends them. A simple
turning over of the earth-- every other row in the fall-- a rooting
among the living and the dead.

H. Shaw Cauchy