Not doubloons.
Not carrots.
Not trees.
Therefore
not shade.
Therefore
not rest.
Not even
the dream of it.
So not grace.
Not even green.
It will give dust.
It will give grease.
It will give up
the greasy
fettered feathers
of birds busily
becoming heat.
But not worms.
Not enough,
at least.
Nor the lush
promise
their thriving
might provide.
Therefore
not daisies.
Nor tulips.
Therefore not
the eye’s relief.
It will give haze.
It will give glass.
Flung in two
thousand
arcing shards.
It will give
a modern history
of trash. Cups
and plates
of polystyrene
and pine-scented
hand-sized
cardboard trees.
It will give
my daughter
rashes, burns,
and bleeds.
So it will
give grief.
Enough to
chafe on
in the slotted
August light
and breeze.
And stones.
It will
give stones.
One whole
rainbow’s
ragged range.
Shucked
by boots.
By fingers.
By the trowel’s
buckled blade.
Enough
to stack.
To study,
catalog,
and grade.
Though
doing so
will not bless
this place.
Though I
do—despite
myself—
still wish
to know
their names.
from The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin
Find more by Charlie Clark at the library
Copyright © 2020 Charlie Clark
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.