Noah
keys and pale-worn volumes,
the room slowly turning,
Noah tilted in his ark,
surely mad, surely mad.
The crows are at it again:
in lieu of wisdom, they are
loud on the backs of houses.
They remember the stones
of flooded streets
and the nervous fingers
of keening women,
their eyes shot with blood.
From the braces and rafters
in Noah�s well-pitched dome,
they ignore the world above,
mock the world below.
Noah dreams of sun
and sloping vineyard rows,
picks the fleas uncounted
from his beard, ponders
the meaning of dung.
He almost drowned
when his mother
refused to come along.
The rain sang to all her graves,
dread-hair fanned out
in every sad direction,
limbs, combs, names, thumbs,
the bodies of loved ones
bumping against the boat.
A thousand years have flown,
but the blind-green waters
have not receded.
Noah waits: the timbers groan,
his fertile wife lies sleeping.
According to the crows,
time has lost its meaning.
Land. Land.
He carves a window in the hull:
to his wonder, fresh air rushes in.
June 16, 2006
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