Free Dirt by Henri Cole

Free Dirt

My house is mine:

the choice of menu, 

the radio and television, 

the unpolished floors, 

the rumpled sheets.

It’s like being inside

a rolltop desk. I have

no maid who takes care

of me. Sometimes, 

during breakfast,

I speak French with

a taxidermied wren. 

There is no debt

between us. We listen

to language tapes:

Viens-tu du ciel profond (Baudelaire)? 

Always, I hear a little oratorio

inside my head. Moths

have carried away my carpets, 

like invisible pallbearers.

I like invisibleness, 

except in the moon’s strong, 

broad rays. Some nights, 

I ask her paleness, Will I be okay? 

I am weak and fruitless at night,

like a piece of meat with eyes, 

but in the morning optimistic again, 

like a snowflake that has traveled

many miles and many years

to be admired on the kitchen pane.

Alone, I guzzle

and litter and urinate

and shout. Please do not

wake me from this dream, 

making meals from discrete

objects—a sweet potato, 

a jar of marmalade, 

a bottle of sauvignon blanc. 

Today, I saw a sign

in majuscule for FREE DIRT

and thought, We all have

chapters we’d rather keep

unpublished, in which we

get down with the swirl. 

The little wren perched on my

finger weighs almost nothing, 

just nails and beak. But it

gives me tiny moments—

here at my kitchen table—

like a diaphanous chorus

mewling something

about love, or the haze

of love, a haze that makes

me squint-eyed and sick

if I think too much about it.

What am I but this flensed

syntax, sight and sound, 

in which my heart, not

insulated yet, makes

ripple effects down the line?