erosion :: janet eigner
When you wipe off the kitchen table, careful not to let the crumbs
fall to the floor, and sweep the detritus smoothly into the pan,
when you pour the dustballs with yesterday’s broccoli and rice
into the brown paper bag, where do you think it goes?
My husband knows, brushing crusts to the floor,
scattering dirt as if the broom were his windmill.
Silt sticks to the outermost moldings, but the remainder
he gathers up to feed his dazzling garden.
He plays erosion as the game he knows it is,
brushing against the dangerous strengths which plane us back,
like the Colorado River, chocolate orange, so full of itself
as it wears through the brilliant canyon rock
sweeping away the ground we would stand eternally upon.
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