A SOLITARY HOUSE
I have been in this place before,
walked among foam-cushioned furniture,
through spacious rooms, the scent of my own
cologne dilating nostrils. As if building
something from snow, I have shaped cold
loneliness shovelful after shovelful.
My feelings have grown perfectly small
until I can hold them in my numb hand
one emotion at a time. I say that I am empty.
I mean that whatever I do
is no longer meaningful. Turning a page
in a book annoys me. Music does not engage
me. I stare at a strip of sunlight
on the kitchen floor, something I’ve been
waiting to do all day. It’s more than
observation. It’s nearly as good as love,
warm and yellow on the hardwood, nothing
to encumber.
After dinner I droop into a chair.
Ropes of insight tighten into nothing.
This is a time when my mind accepts
dead ends. I settle for a long evening
and wait for the storm to rip the sky
as forecast. There are five rooms in this house
that no longer exist. There aren’t even
small clues of sound, just quiet like the silence
of secret lovers, peeling from walls
and pointing right at me.
STEEL MILL
Idling at a stoplight, I look left
at a space like a big open window
formed by horizontal cross beams,
vertical girders on one side,
the factory itself on the other.
In the center of this window,
setting sun has come to a standstill,
orange homage to workers who
daily breathe in the effluvia
of molten steel. They can’t bring
the sun inside. It hangs within
factory corridors, a teasing paradox.
The light changes, and I accelerate,
offensive odor of hot steel and
passive resistance trapped in
my sense memory.
Beyond the factory, air thins out,
losing toxicity. I’d like to stop thinking
about that noxious workplace, but
it’s summer. I’m in an air-conditioned car
and heat must be multiple times more
in there.
I pass a housing development where
people are jumping into blue swimming pools
and laughing. My concern lingers
for the ones down the road, dressed
in steel-toed shoes and the heat of hell.