Friday, December 20, 2013

When the Topsoil is Gone

The dirt under her nails isn’t chic.
She comes by her red brick lips the hard way,
which is fine if you don’t mind clay in your throat.
 
That hardpan doesn’t even know she’s there,
scratching with her pencil, trying to form words.
The wind and water made it look so easy,
etching a coastline one grain at a time.
 
How do you learn to make bricks with mud
when the rain won’t let up? Or how to make
mud when the rain won’t come? The straw is
only an afterthought, unless you’re a swallow.
 
Yes but then we are not birds and our instincts
take us into layers they never dreamed.
So come with your soiled nails and clay lips,
we’ll be the envy of windblown waves.

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