Calisthenics, Week 3

When we did battle and fell down
the finish line was the old fig tree--
prayer bell and dream of days, the dress I shed.
However a poet feels about himself,
the elastic belt with its metal tongue
still rusts like unwashed dogfood cans.

They are all here, the races, the classes,
at the resturant the bus boys,
like most adults, were born during a war.
I woke up. What I saw first--the light.
It is unusal that a board game involes cards
but no job accounts for the impulse to find.
I emerged through those curtained booths
like a diver surfacing, wet gleam of polish.
Greeks gave up old dishes and slid into repose,
in this way they can also articulate two stages
of the psychoanalytic process:
the brick and mortar, foundation gives way.
After this long excursion into the more
distant regions of daydream
an anthology arises devoted to small boxes,
such as chests and caskets.


The Burns boys, like most adults,
were born into a war, devoted
to aluminun wheels, planes, caskets.
They emerged from their mother's legs,
each a year apart, surfacing divers
to break the wet gleam of polish
between worlds. When they did battle
and fell, they were buried under
the old fig. Here lies brick, mortar,
and metal, etched on the headstones.
They say the Greeks fought Troy
in two stages: daydream and repose.
The Burns boys died without anthology,
without a curtain of process to drape
their shoulders and washed in war, rust.