Literary Debris

The deities are losing cellular cohesion, gasping desperately for breaths as they become liquid and evaporate.
The poets have been usurped by melancholy memoirists,
aching to have original lives.
Every story seems to be told, despite repetition
despite repetition
despite repetition,
despite…
repetition.
I keep sweeping up the dried remnants of fallen giants:
Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, O’Hara;
I even find Baum and Steinbeck and Spyri in the wreckage.
I collect the bits I can in a beautiful vessel where they remain safe, more pieces having been spared than expected.
Few search for the treasures, worried they’ll cut themselves on the old words of masters.
Picking through the pieces still brings me joy
even if I’ve no one to share them with;
I wish I could be as beautiful whole as they are in shards & residue.

Notes

Written 16 February 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Literary Debris” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)