Three Poems
Small God Shoes
i.
Gods were good
for utterance over entrails
or bone dice, foul
for the heat of summer,
cupped ears at need,
both mutter and shout—
we are stone and free,
this year of our lord.
Small god shoes
are filled easy by Number,
a dog who beckons well,
without a better offer
of either treat or play.
Happy Number, the true, the
good and, broken, the jolly;
we prophesy on Number, too,
and kill fewer beasts
to learn time. Number
explained this summer heat.
Yes, Number must hear us.
ii.
What he should have been was angry
at the rock. After all, it was a rock
and he was walking through, all legged
with purpose. His fingertips can curve
into dirt less fragile than themselves,
grit can slide between nail and nailbed,
into each wrinkle at the knuckles,
can give him protection against the light
and teach him to declare: here light, there
dark, there dim water—but half-dry mud
will dig through his skin as he climbs
the trailside hill, so that soil at once shields
and destroys him. And he will get above
the rock. But what a simpler world, anger.
So clear and strong in its swing of the sledge.
I only hope he does not forget, having risen
above this rock, that he can still go forward
and drop down again; I myself am buried high
into the clouds, too muddily
enthusiastic to walk, and now
I just toss my delirium about
like cobwebs on the highest branches
of a beech tree. Did I climb a beech,
and did I start from the same root?
Reaching for a trunk, he needs to wrap
his soft arm around the bark. He tumbles—
and did he clear it? I’m too high to see.
This mist is nice, keeping good count
of the birdcalls without the bodily distraction.
Humor me: did he land across the rock?
Did he break across the surface? Or did he
fall by chance beyond it? Did he choose
well, despite the fact that he has hair
and eyes and divots beside his kneecaps?
Someone, please—will he be angry
on the ground, now? Will he swing out clear?
Try to Imagine Celery
A snowman could live
for thirty years, and
start to grow
tired of smelling
carrot with each breath.
A snowman would find
the density of his torso
miraculous. A snowman
would never wonder
why his eyes are black,
only wonder at their
perfect blackness. As
tired of carrot as he
may become, he could not
imagine smelling celery as often.
Instead of the almost-
wounded feeling of a too-
short toenail, he would hate
the new snow he had to pack
beneath his armpit.
There is every chance
that voice, which means
self, is all there is.
Who will summon the density
to tell me celery is impossible?
Wren-Thinking
A wren hopped itself
into view. View me,
it said. I said no.
It hopped again, then
fluttered upward and returned.
I won’t give in.
I can’t be sure of you,
I said, you are either
vision only or a lesser mind.
No, it said, I am the mind
and you are something else.
I split the atom
the day after I fell
from the nest, but I could
not care. You can’t sing
when it would save your life,
just because you cannot prove
the meaning of “to save”—
or of life, for that matter.
No, I said. I have given
all of this to you.
Oh, said the wren. He
fluttered up again, back
down. He cocked his head.
∩
Charlie Ericson’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming at Aeon, JAKE, The Atlantic, Measure, Contemporary Literature, and elsewhere. He teaches at Oberlin College.