Late morning I walk out the door,
lock both locks, and a falcon flies over.
Among bus-stop cigarettes an hour later
I have already forgotten about fate.
But then the cannon down at the river
concusses over the city its concern
like the darkest of bells rung once,
and you might as well go buy a tomb.
It’s only a blast of gunpowder that loves
to say its own last name, believes
its place in the history of projectiles.
I’m sure it tries to say power, but this time
only comes a flower of fire and trembling.
Speaking of flour and fire, the old lady
at the bakery is tired of her dusty white life,
no lie, and sings in English she’s ready
to trade the life of her work for opera
and a night life of thorough sleep and dream.
The cannon goes off again and she tells me:
Tell me! so I point to the darkest baguette,
brown as a cannon and warm from fire.
I pay and walk through the city with it
under my arm, my warm cannon,
my secret joy darker than any bread
in the province of purity and bone.
I don’t even walk home. I head toward
the river that runs days to the ocean,
head toward time, toward the notion
I’ll run into someone fantastic—I hope
the man who manned the cannon earlier
this morning (or was that last century?)
who will think my bread strange, an omen.
He thinks he keeps the secret of grinding grain
to powder, and the rising and the heat is all,
and the noon sun will soon be at its peak,
illuminating like any projectile before its fall.

 

 

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John Poch is professor of English and creative writing at Grace College.

 

 

 

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