Contained

After you have swum to the inland island

after you have toweled off with the giant leaf

and rolled in the black resin garment

and scaled the hill like a forgotten saint

and gained the pointed dwelling

after the bellrope brushes your face

one knot for every hesitation of your life

that ends that will end in a burnished bell

once you step back into the footprints

once your arms make a roof above your thoughts

once you are dangling from the rusted crucible

of every furious dissemblance you hath done

and the lake gathers round and glistens with the sound

that carries that turns that licks

the barren and forfeits all clamber and slays

the surfeit of the sun and winds time

to a tether and hooks it on your heart

what then, what then, will you have done?

And how and what should you presume? Exhume?

The coin hewn in half? And if you picked it up,

and began right there on the earthen floor

to scratch out your chance, your yin of a green

and, deeper, your gold, interminable dream?

And tyranny of riches kept

that flattens your thought to a mold?

Now bring on the keepers and the truck.

The packages, the alms.

Cough up your little night

and render your drop

now all the snug particulars are gone.

Copyright © 2006 Robin Behn All rights reserved
from Diner
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission