Immortal Glass

"We do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death." ~ Rousseau.

Army choppers fly close to the eves and
windows of your house. Rat-ta-ta-ta-tat. . . .

The guns take aim again, stick out like
sharp knives. You watch the city,
hear the bombs. Some earth down the block

heaves and falls away. High cupboards
fall onto kitchen counters and floors. Sweep

of freezing atomic mist
as the walls go. Turns out the roof
was always a dreamy thing. It lifts away.

You hear your neighbor yell once and your skin's
fiery, an angry foreigner you’ve never met,

shouting close to your face
about a gyp in stock-trade commissions.

It's the big money and you did it. Smoke
drifts from computers all around.

Surely all this commotion
must be the huge and generous accident
the dying know so well.

Now comes weather that’s new to you,
now a tapping drum of blue light,
now an old humming you know,

depending on which dreams you’ve asked to see.
Where new glass forms everywhere –
new eyes, fingers and hands.

New, and you’re picking up boards and pencils. Seems
hearing's gone silent, and in the calm

you hammer cabinets,
porch railings, thick teak doors.

You can see what's next.
A forest, draped in the fine rain you breathe
for good health.

No one
has explained anything
now that everything

is the scent of crocus, fresh as pages of a new book,
or the glassy blades of a child’s morning in his white room.

Where no one speaks, no one
argues against the notion that everything
is miracles. You end up simple,

dwelling in this child’s many windows
that peek all day into his everywhere.

 

© Tim Bellows