Let whatever will dissolve
do so. Then there’s what’s
left. We say
dregs because we lack courage
to look down into the pit. Fearing perhaps
our own reflection, we say we understand
history. But what happens tomorrow
is no closer than what happened
yesterday, in a city we have never
seen. I am eating toast right now. It was
bread and now it is toast and tomorrow
it will be nutrient and offal, though not
in equal parts. If you are reading this,
then it has gone even
further. If you are reading this, I too,
may have been transformed
into nutrient and offal, though not in equal
parts. The organ grinder’s monkey
believes he runs the show, bringing
the organ grinder along for the music.
There may already be too many theories
about God. It is possible that Lazarus only hid out
in that tomb. It is possible that the rain
now falling in the next field will remain
in the next field, while here the sun
will hold its firm grip on time’s wheel.
It is possible that even these words
will learn to speak themselves.
Dan Lewis lives in Worcester, MA. He is the author of This Garden and two chapbooks, Tickets for the Broken Year and Iconospheres. Winner of the 2012 Frank O’Hara Prize, he has been published by The Cortland Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bombay Gin, Diner, Blue Unicorn, and others.
