Sport 7: Winter 1991
The Continuance
The Continuance
Now that the day is adjourned, he returns
To routine devotion, to a knotted rosary
That is nothing more than a calendar,
The cadence and creep of a kingdom come.
It is hard to know from the evidence
If a judgement can ever be made,
If he is the one to hand down a verdict,
Or the one who stands, when asked, to hear his fate.
The herb garden, green through the warm winter,
Has been scoured by an abrupt ice storm.
The mint has gone from flower to char,
Yet by his effort (the old sheets thrown over
The garden bed each dusk) the leafless sticks
Stand in their rectitude, and the patterns—
The braids, the knots, the compass-although torn
And skeletal, maintain their once-full form.
Long ago he cut back the roses.
The earth, mounded out of necessity
Around each, is too easily compared.
A pile of dirt remains a pile of dirt.