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Poetry by David Capps
You will remember the earth
folding under so many leaves
like faces of indistinguishable consciences
merging with the dead, mulch
in a pit of bare iron
that had been there for as long as we knew--
as though what unifies everything
were ineluctable work,
knuckle scraping against the outer ring,
the heft of wheelbarrows against the wind,
occasional smiles near dusk,
the potful of potatoes at the sagging end
of day.
You will remember
how you carried whole yards of leaves
and dropped them in, one after the next, making sure
to smooth out any uneven surfaces
as your brother looked on
already old and wise
and bored with everything.
You will remember
how you carried forward a whole pile of abstractions
pivoting across the entire earth
even as your bones conspired against you,
yet somewhere along the line
lost your grip,
that this was in the fall,
that there was a poetry reading,
that there were people you knew who were not
from home you yourself were no longer
home.
folding under so many leaves
like faces of indistinguishable consciences
merging with the dead, mulch
in a pit of bare iron
that had been there for as long as we knew--
as though what unifies everything
were ineluctable work,
knuckle scraping against the outer ring,
the heft of wheelbarrows against the wind,
occasional smiles near dusk,
the potful of potatoes at the sagging end
of day.
You will remember
how you carried whole yards of leaves
and dropped them in, one after the next, making sure
to smooth out any uneven surfaces
as your brother looked on
already old and wise
and bored with everything.
You will remember
how you carried forward a whole pile of abstractions
pivoting across the entire earth
even as your bones conspired against you,
yet somewhere along the line
lost your grip,
that this was in the fall,
that there was a poetry reading,
that there were people you knew who were not
from home you yourself were no longer
home.
About the writer
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David Capps is a philosophy professor and poet who lives in Hamden, CT. He is the author of two chapbooks: 'Poems from the First Voyage' (The Nasiona Press, 2019), and 'A Non-Grecian Non-Urn' (Yavanika Press, 2019).
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