Given gravity, it is only right

that the houses hunched along the road

seem substantive and unconcerned.

Yet their great weight distorts the air,

as the castle in the fish’s bowl

makes the fish seem ill at ease,

unsuited to its situation.

The soul if it is a point,

a tiny point adrift within,

can not answer their harrumph

nor penetrate their shingled bulk

to coats hung in their mudrooms.

The passing man is himself a bowl,

and his soul a fish that hovers there.

He feels it drifting through his skull

a blinking thing with things to say,

if only it could find its tongue,

as sunrooms drawl of ottomans

and concrete steps with wrought-iron rail

say all there is to say about

coming in and going out.

In darkened dens, glowing bowls

sit silently on polished tops

while ashy flakes come drifting down.

So the soul is fed on flakes of wonder—

the passing man senses it

rises open-mouthed and then darts down

to storm around its quavering castle.

Don Barkin has published poems in Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Commonweal, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. He is the author of three full-length books of poems, That Dark Lake (2009), Houses (2017), and The Rail Stop at Wassaic (2020).

Also by this author
Published in the February 24, 2017 issue: View Contents

Most Recent

© 2025 Commonweal Magazine. All rights reserved. Design by Point Five. Site by Deck Fifty.