A bit of Heaven and Earth are offered,
but not much, through the tall windows 
over the dumpster and willows.

Light spills across the newly waxed floors.
They are a point of pride for the trustees
who have so much to do for so little thanks.

If they are not waxed, they will age quickly
from water and road salt and chairs dragged 
for meetings six times each day.

Hundreds of people come off the street for free 
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s dinners. 
Almost no one considers the work of floors.

Most of life is just things taking their toll.
Surfaces wear away to stuff no one knows
what to do with except pity, demean, or ignore.

A guy sitting off to the side just prayed out loud 
for his worst enemy. “Bless them and heal me,” he asked.
The fluorescent lights glow in the new wax all around him.

Still Home

For the first time in eight years sounds of Sunday morning birds fill the house uninterrupted by a chop saw or hammering, the familiar voice growling, goddamnit, and an engine speeding off to the hardware store. Sun rays pouring in are not milky with plaster dust. Doorways are not blocked by plastic screens. The rooms are free of a workshop’s worth of tools, compounds, fasteners, paints, and stacked furniture. The home is tidy and things are in their proper places imagined eight years before. So if it is not peaceful here the birds are not to blame. Any disturbance here must come from deep within the living heart of the house, past its wires and pipes, the lath and masonry and insulation, somewhere in the part that will go as it came, eight years earlier, leaving exterior paint peeled and window glazing cracked, as if the heart were a wanderer who had opened the gate that was built in the fence that leads up to the steps that were built to mount the porch that was poured to hold a person knocking on the door that was hung to keep some of the world out and let some of the world in.

Steve Brown has authored two poetry collections, Trample & Sew and News of Need, and received two Pushcart Prize nominations and numerous grants and residencies. His writing has appeared in Dunes Review, Witness, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. He is executive director of the Kalamazoo Foundation for Excellence. Videos, books, and more information can be found @stevenbrownfinearts and Stevenmatthewbrown.com