the fossil record
<<48>>
"Call the world, if you please, 'the Vale of Soul Making.'" ---Keats
The vales of tears end at the chin
where the canyons of sweat continue,
shearing redemption into a sprig
of clover. Trouble's raw materials
even chafe at the tools invented
to intervene: central heating,
refrigerators, false teeth, morphine.
Concrete and lumber constructed on
a ledge's lip begin to digest
while cancer, madness, and old age
eat at the attention due a carpet
or dining room set. The house guest
wrestling with himself beneath a tome
on a bookshelf asks for no comfort
of towel or tomb but irritates folk
with a blueprint of soul's living room.
Rich Murphy