January 18, 2009

A Million Statues

“A pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues”

                     --e.e. cummings


Each time I drive up the ridge at the end of an hour
each time we walk down those graveled ruts
I see his empty house with dusty windows
unpainted siding, sculpture like fallen trees
camouflaged in the gully just steps from your cottage.

I sip bourbon now miles away, just a friend remembering
breakfast, dream of the collapse of that empty house
the rotted timbers disintegrating silently into dry leaves
and I know that if his house were mine
I’d empty your cottage & fill my house with you
because, you know, you’re worth those million statues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very melancholy, Dan. The bourbon is such a site-specific booze, it sorta places the poem in a Sounthern venue... Rich with debris of description. A poem to be excavated...xoC