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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Housekeeping

The hurricane does its housekeeping
over the turbid sea,
seizing the waves,
brushing their phantasmal feathers
into flying spray,
until the sanctum of the mighty corpus
of water is cleansed of its malaise,
and returned to a galaxy of light
when the storm passes.

So do I work removing the detritus
from my life,
sweeping the floor
casting the tracked in dirt
to the wind.
Bringing order to chaos.
The cleansing of the soul,
the flooding of deltas and fields.
The renewal of hope and wonder.

Bird poop falling on my head,
humbly noted.
Toilet taken in a garden.
Baptismal water alive with life.
Our taking of fruit from
the world’s orchards.
All of this consonant with
music, poetry, picture and dance.
Tasks that bring renewal and order,
and teach us
one does not create beauty
with litter.

Published inIndex of all Poems