Poetry of Issue #7        Page 6

The Codicil

Although we don’t intend to die, observe the language of this will
which leaves per stirpes equal shares of drying meadows laced with mice,
of shattered windows taped crosswise against the eerie hurricane,
of oil lamps guttering like the souls he will not, never, no, snuff out:

so that our heirs, thumbing the foxed pages of this gibbering will,
refrain from raising hand against each other’s hand—
we would not have them wrangling through the winter’s dark
nor razing this gray house before its unavoidable decline.

Being of sound mind and body, the boy goes wheeling down the lane,
then, snagged on snaking wire fence, clamps a grimy hand
where gouts of glorious blood, cells replacing cells at lightning speed,
are wiped with casual disregard on seat of jeans: so is rude life spared.

Let’s talk now of madness that is mute refusal of the dying art of cells.

It’s the small things that will get us in the end: hardening
of the thick sclerotic arteries, hugger-mugger shutting down;
those brightly bubbling pathways that could drop us like a stone—
they pinch us, these tightening mortal shoes, they stop us, stop us cold.

Therefore, know our will, a flighty and half-conscious thing
that flickers in the dripping glass with manic, foolish glee;
we didn’t intend, ourselves, to die, in fact will be the last to know—
read the codicil, the articles and uproarious fatal clause:
we will leave you lingering mist upon the glass, per the incontestable word.

(This poem first appeared in the chapbook Bridal Veil Falls,
Flutter Press, 2013)

  Carol Alexander