Wash Day–Jeff Burt

Wash Day

 

If we say on a particular day

that weather is not significant

it is only because we fail

to acknowledge our insignificance.

I watch the cotton-rag sky,

how the blue jersey wrinkles

with clouds, and at sunset

the one red dot of the sun

dyes the entire cloth.

What occurs this day

among news and history

I will not remember,

but I shall recall

this sky, this sunset,

this transcendence.

I want to shake it,

make it snap in the air,

fold it lengthwise

just so it does not quite touch

the ground, like a flag

that covered a lost soldier,

hallowed for the following day

and how we may live under it.