The Broom in  General   

The rocks shone like emery boards,
reflective ruins.
Ceremonial without great effort—
like the swaying of a great rope bridge
over a ravine,
or mushrooms that suddenly
pry upward, the size of cabbages,
footstools,
to reveal the tip
of a lost continent,
the way the broom
in a pantry dumbly speaks.
It is a mule of words—
useful for wresting under edges,
unsupplanted,
as if straw were dried fire and a match
a way of watering it.
Because of dead leaves
I can hear
when people walk on my lawn.

By Lee Upton

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Other poems by Lee Upton:

• Apology To Keats
• Destruction Of Daughters
• Hog Roast
• Indispensable Sign
• Interrupting An Addict
• The Broom
• The Crying Room
• The Fish House
• The How And Why Of Rocks And Minerals
• The Table