No One Here To Bend The Light
One sure thing will come of this death talk.
It will rain tomorrow
and there will be no rainbow.
I am the prism
and I will not be here to
bend the light.
I will be a bag of pipes
on the bathroom floor,
this clogging
finally run through.
No one will stop
to listen to the shower water or
hear the cat
scratch my screen-door.
Only hopeless flowerpots will notice
the lack of my rain,
soil pulling away from
their little mouths.
Not even the mailman will notice
the dust on yesterday's letters,
nor will my heart know.
It was the first to go
and did not notice the rest of me
catching up.
Published in Negative Capability, Spring 1983