LIFE BEING A CLEANSING CHORE

 

A CLEANSING CHORE

 

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.---T. S. Eliot, Gerontion

Something about a broom

in a closet’s nook tells all
there is to know: cleansing
mud, guck, cobwebs, refuse
caught in crannies where we
did not expect to find them,
tripping sinners and saints
into a thicket of meaning
where there is really none.

Dirt gathers, envelopes us
into cocoons of loneliness
and guilt, we spend lives
dusting them off our houses
(better left without porches
here) until we begin to accept
how each rushed wide swipe
simply means shedding straw
with every futile, angry pass.

On porches covered by drift,
we will always find a broom
shorn of its straw, its handle
wrapped in wet tattered rags,
leaning against scarred posts
like some toothless scarecrow,
looking tired, and scared, too,
that the swarm of blackbirds
will perch on it, then defecate.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA