The Tub
Cat-curled at the washtub’s zinc bottom,
all he could see was a cone of empty air
stopping at a sky as gray as spoiled milk.
He’d pushed off and vaulted from firm mud
into wild wobble and now, becalmed
like an oldtime monk adrift in a coracle
waiting for God to guide him across oceans
of vast vacant rhythms to blessed isles,
he drowsed with his ear pressed to a ticking
hum from the pond’s muffled murk. Once
this tub was spangled with silver fronds
like furry crystals that splayed up winter
window panes. His lick that stuck to both
had tasted like blood, both hot and cold,
then numb. He’d not do that again.
But the tub is leaden gray now and smells
like when his mother irons. A dragonfly
alights to perch on the rim, a small monster
but big enough in old dinosaur times
to eat him. Enough. Up he sits, blinking
blind in daylight blaze. He’s cast afloat
at the center of an utterly still pond
the color of thin pea soup. Sun will shine
off it, but will not enter it. What to do?
He must wait for where he suspends
to become a shallow dip in a snowy desert
where only a few cattails’ stark stalks
will mark where a world sleeps for its time
to come round again. Then he can clamber
from a steel cocoon, wade waist-deep drifts
to the warm house to be hugged and kissed
and told how much he was missed.
all he could see was a cone of empty air
stopping at a sky as gray as spoiled milk.
He’d pushed off and vaulted from firm mud
into wild wobble and now, becalmed
like an oldtime monk adrift in a coracle
waiting for God to guide him across oceans
of vast vacant rhythms to blessed isles,
he drowsed with his ear pressed to a ticking
hum from the pond’s muffled murk. Once
this tub was spangled with silver fronds
like furry crystals that splayed up winter
window panes. His lick that stuck to both
had tasted like blood, both hot and cold,
then numb. He’d not do that again.
But the tub is leaden gray now and smells
like when his mother irons. A dragonfly
alights to perch on the rim, a small monster
but big enough in old dinosaur times
to eat him. Enough. Up he sits, blinking
blind in daylight blaze. He’s cast afloat
at the center of an utterly still pond
the color of thin pea soup. Sun will shine
off it, but will not enter it. What to do?
He must wait for where he suspends
to become a shallow dip in a snowy desert
where only a few cattails’ stark stalks
will mark where a world sleeps for its time
to come round again. Then he can clamber
from a steel cocoon, wade waist-deep drifts
to the warm house to be hugged and kissed
and told how much he was missed.
