Earth and Sky

Of all things contained here,
please find

this shelf of persons (noses,
plaster tongues) and their

miniature landscapes:
Nobody makes

the little ones, houses,
horses, the way they do

the big ones. It's the scale:
tiny wreath, cactus, a bedded

sheep; you can tell
they're not "actual"

because anyway
the sheep won't bleat;

there's no seeing
the pale lung,

the knowing look,
the pregnant weight

doing what needs
to be done. And anyway,

nobody rings that phone,
or the residents of the

impossibly small hotel.
Opening the door, there's

no room for a drink,
no hostess, not even

a dull one, with 24-hour
television and maybe

a skin problem. You may
have had as much

in real life, the repeated
floral arrangements,

the candy cane
everyone's modeled

stuck to the same
awkward tree. You may

have meant to live
as if molecules did signal

with pygmy solar flares:
"Fresh Pudding!"

But here there's only
the tiny dull

coffin, the dragon
with bitten nails,

the distant heart,
the chipped and quizzical feet.

Copyright © 2009 Read Blinn All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission