16
Nockamixon
S. Wagner
A man carries a shovel from the shed,
deciding, finally, to bury someone alive—
his sister might do. He thinks the cloudy
sky could be blacker. He’s tired of its oscillation
between grey and yellow. If the man was god,
he would’ve made the sky out of paper
and, banging two rocks together,
sparked a fire, made a carbon scar
instead of the omniscient blue eye.
He would like to set his sister on fire.
But the shovel will do.
He digs and mistakes the smoke coiling
through pine roots for his father’s breath.
Digs and digs, hits stone and thinks
about his mom spilling her watery beer
with every splash of rock thrown
into Tohickon Creek. The fog combed
by cornstalks, that’s his long-term memory,
burning away as the sun rises.
The man digs and when he’s done
he’s standing in the belly
of a reservoir. He can sense
the shifts in weather coming,
knows by nightfall what he’ll do.