Sewing Machine

I.
 
Inside this
poem is a 
moment where 
light slants 
at sixty 
degrees—hold 
up your hands 
like a sextant to 
the horizon 
and the page 
will give you 
latitude and 
longing, dappled 
shade in the 
shape of maple 
leaves shaking 
their fingers over 
the dark 
corners of a garden.
 
II.
 
From outside the poem, 
all is in shadow, a boat 
in a shallow river, running 
always aground on 
exposed sewer pipes and 
shame’s effluent current. 
Hold your hands up to the 
poem like a sexton carefully 
closing the church’s shutters 
against a storm. Rain 
sluices off the shale and 
sandstone of the hills, rinses 
the slate roof of the sanctuary.
 
III.
 
 
Before and after this poem are both a sham. 
 
Hold it in your hands. Trace the stitches sewn 
 
into seams, the threads moving between two 
 
surfaces. Inside the poem, your shackles loosen. 
 
The world looks less a shambles—a farmer swiftly 
 
sexes a pile of chicks and separates them accordingly, 
 
but the poem doesn’t give a shit about that kind 
 
of thing. It clutches them all in its sexless arms.