Break Down the House
by Tom Sheehan
Break down the house, take it over there piece by memory, or memory by piece
like damned piecework in the war when some counted bucks not hours, take it
over there where mountains sit down with quick clean breaths, where edge of the
small pond works upright. Drop it there piece by piece; we are tired of the old site
where nothing but pain lingers at the doorstep. What spoke here speaks up:
One broken wing
One leg trapped by steel
Shingle tossed loose by wind
One dug grave left empty
To what recourse
Three empty aches left over
Finger a burnt leaf
Taught of dust
A limb learnt
The cutting rope
Things lightly considered
But deadly lost.
Tom Sheehan’s newest book is Korean Echoes, an e-book from Milspeak Publishers, and five more eBooks are in their production queue. In his cover letter, he wrote: “Every now and then I pore through one or more writing pads I carry in my vehicle and find a piece I had written, not always remembering where or when and often not what kicked a piece off in the first place, but somehow treasuring the effort of recall that I am commanded to in the second place, sometimes with a better yield than the original. That is a severe joy.”
qarrtsiluni 