Beneath the Roof Needing Repair
those few notes never
heard here before
one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else
and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is as dry as before
from
“Unknown Bird”
W.
S. Merwin
I like the
different ways the roof allows sound
to come into it
and go away from it at the same
time—a sound
roof or an unsound roof, it makes
no difference
and it’s today’s May 1st rain for instance
that falls and
pings and runs for that one
slight entry
in, and won’t it be found—along the rotted
beam, beneath
all that draft barrier, shingle, nail,
and won’t it,
liquid sky, blot the ceiling above my bed
the way it
always did in my room all those years ago,
a stain that at
first was an infant’s fist, how babies
came into the
world tight against the light and then,
once warm,
loosen their fingers enough to cup the round
moon over their
faces, squeeze it into a river,
and swallow
what’s been made just for them, and their
sound, isn’t
that another rain entirely, in all skies,
their urge
every sort of storm or leisure only
a languid
mother could not appreciate.
It’s soon that
the little fist, the grip, or caress to coax
becomes, in enough
rain without repair, a child’s
uncombed head
of hair, in an August wind maybe,
and it’s soon,
(this wind dries everything completely)
that through
the fall, the little fist, the open hand,
the wild child
hair stays all of those things.
Without rain the
way in is an abandoned mine, a slight
sag, the way
in, the draft, is whispering that skies, to the west
are beginning
to dim, the breast, unlatched,
has stayed
swollen all this time and a tongue, older now,
coaxes the
cloud, cold heat at first, spreading out
against the
paper, shape-shifting like a daemon, ceiling
soaking it,
beneath the roof, needing repair.
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